Events

Speakers

Dr Rupa Marya is a physician, activist, artist and writer who is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and the founder and executive director of the Deep Medicine Circle, a worker-directed nonprofit committed to healing the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, story, learning and restoration. In 2021, she published her first book with political ecologist, food system activist and policy professor Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. This book advances a new level of diagnosis that incorporates history and lines of power into our understanding of the root causes of health disparities and the rise of inflammatory disease in industrialized places, offering compelling treatment options for what is ailing people and the planet.

Dr Monika Hirmer is a certified Teaching Fellow (FHEA) who has been teaching at SOAS, University of London, in the departments of Religions and Philosophies and Politics and International Studies. Monika’s area of research lies at the intersection of anthropology and philosophy and spans Goddess traditions, tantric traditions, non-anthropocentric cosmologies and ontologies, and decolonial studies, with a focus on South Asia. She obtained her PhD in Religions and Philosophies from SOAS, preceded by an MPhil in Anthropology of Religion from the University of Hyderabad, India, and an MA in South Asian Area Studies from SOAS. She also holds a BA in Political Sciences from the University of Florence, Italy. In 2020 Monika co-founded the open access, multilingual and peer reviewed publishing platform Decolonial Subversions, of which she is Editor-in-Chief. From October 2023 she will be a postdoctoral fellow at the centre for advanced studies ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’, Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Dr Romina Istratii, co-editor of Decolonial Subversions, is UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the School of History, Religions and Philosophies at SOAS University of London. She is Principal Investigator of the UKRI-funded project Bridging religious studies, gender & development and public health to address domestic violence: A novel approach for Ethiopia and the UK and creator of project dldl/ድልድል. She is a critical international development thinker and practitioner from Eastern Europe with decade-long experience in developing cosmology-sensitive and people-centred methodologies and approaches for analysing and addressing issues with gender dimensions in religious societies of Africa. In 2019, she initialised the Decolonising Research Initiative under the aegis of the SOAS Research Directorate and in 2020, she co-founded of Decolonial Subversions, an open access, multilingual, peer-reviewed publishing platform that aims to subvert western epistemology and to promote the diversification of knowledge production. She is the author of the monograph Adapting Gender and Development to Local Religious Contexts: A Decolonial Approach to Domestic Violence in Ethiopia (Routledge, 2020).

Crispin Chetwynd is the co-author of Biomedical research and global sustainability: Throwing off the straitjacket of hierarchical thinking, making space for nomadic thinking was born in London (1961) and lives in Llanwrda, Wales. He worked in the catering industry for thirty years, as a Chef working internationally for Rock & Roll Bands (1987-1994) He gave up cooking for a living in 2004 and completed a BA in Fine Art at Chelsea collage of Art, UAL, London (2007-2010) He co-curated exhibitions at the Subway Gallery (2006-2013) Solo Exhibition, Eat-Shout, Subway Gallery (2009) Group Shows, Rough Cuts, Subway Gallery (2013).

Host

Amali Lokugamage is an honorary associate professor at UCL and a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist. She is a co-author of Biomedical research and global sustainability: Throwing off the straitjacket of hierarchical thinking, making space for nomadic thinking, has been a long-standing advocate of respectful maternity care, human rights in healthcare, equality/diversity and decolonisation with particular interest in power imbalances as well as hierarchical versus nomadic thinking in the context of global health and the Anthropocene.

This event was part four of a four-part series entitled: “Physical, Mental, & Planetary Health: exploring the links between the environment and health.”

Jointly organised by Flourishing Diversity, the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter, and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford, this webinar series brings together voices from all over the world to explore humanity’s interconnection with lands, waters, forests, and fellow species, highlighting the crucial role that biocultural diversity plays in the health of people and populations.

A recording of part one, on the relationship between climate change and mental health, can be found here. Part three will cover “Health systems, culture, and climate change,” and part four will conclude the with a discussion about “Uniting the health of people and planet: paths to a sustainable and healthy future.”

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