On 29 November 2024, the webinar “Health under Climate Pressure… and Why a Transdisciplinary Approach Is Necessary” took place and spotlighted the urgent challenges at the intersection of climate and health. In her presentation, tdAcademy Fellow Dr. Isabella Radhuber (University of Vienna) explores how health can be understood amid climate change and what kind of research is needed to address conceptual, practical, and policy challenges.
Dr. Isabella M. Radhuber highlighted the need for qualitative research to capture how people experience extreme weather events and their implications on health—understood as a multidimensional state rooted in biological, ecological, and socio-political-economic interactions across time and space. She argued that transdisciplinary approaches are vital to redefining political responsibility in safeguarding health amidst changing climate. The session included an engaging dialogue with participants, focusing on the opportunities and challenges of transdisciplinary methods.
This presentation is based on a forthcoming book chapter: Radhuber, I.M., Fiske, A., Prainsack, B. (2025). Health Under Climate Pressure: An Emerging Research Agenda. In Faulkner, A. (Ed.), A Research Agenda in Biomedicine & Society. Elgar Research Agendas.
Dr. Isabella M. Radhuber is a political scientist at University of Vienna’s Centre for the Study of Contemporary Solidarity (CeSCoS). Her research focuses on environmental politics, health politics and decolonisation. During her tdAcademy fellowship from October 2023 to January 2024, she explored the links between health and climate change.
Recent Publications include:
Radhuber, I. M., Fiske, A., Galasso, I., Gessl, N., Hill, M. D., Morales, E. R., Olarte-Sánchez, L.E., Pelfini, A., Saxinger, G. & Spahl, W. (2023). Toward global citizenship? People (de) bordering their lives during COVID-19 in Latin America and Europe. Global Public Health, 18(1), https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2023.2285880
Radhuber, I. M., Haddad, C., Kieslich, K., Paul, K. T., Prainsack, B., El-Sayed, S., Schlogl, L., Spahl, W. & Weiss, E. (2024). Citizenship in times of crisis: biosocial state–citizen relations during COVID-19 in Austria. BioSocieties, 19(2), 326-351.
Radhuber, I. M., & Radcliffe, S. A. (2023). Contested Sovereignties: Indigenous disputes over plurinational resource governance. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 6(1), 556-577.