U21 Early Career Researchers Come Together to Tackle Planetary Health Challenges

U21 ECR Workshop: Planetary Health, 21-25 February 2022 Co-hosted by the University of Edinburgh

This year’s online ECR workshop brought together nearly 80 participants from 17 U21 universities, across 12 countries, to address the challenges faced in Planetary Health today; the rapid degradation of our planet threatens the health – and survival – of communities around the world.

The workshop strengthened participants’ understanding of and ability to act upon these challenges through plenary conversations with world-leading experts, as well as a variety of skills development sessions and networking events – all empowering early career researchers to be agents of change. 

The five plenary sessions offered the opportunity to brainstorm on creative applications of planetary health research, drawing experts from non-governmental organizations, financial institutions, law and politics, the media and activist groups into conversation with top planetary health scholars from across the globe. The panel discussions also leveraged evidence on the human-specific consequences of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, resource scarcity, and other challenges to call for urgent action and design better systems that incorporate known externalities into our economics, law, business, and politics. 

This year’s speakers included: Katherine Trebeck, Senior Strategic Advisor for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll); Phil Mackie, Consultant in Public Health, Clinical and Protecting Health, Public Health Scotland; Jonathan Jennings and Devika Gopal Agge, Executive Director and Chief Development Officer Health in Harmony and Professor Corinne Reid, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Victoria University, to name a few. Contributions were also made to the sessions by the workshop participants themselves. You can view the full programme here for further details.

Skills and social sessions covered important ECR-related topics including approaches to interdisciplinary research, wellbeing and mental health as well as mentoring. It was also an honour to have included a session on Indigenous Leaders featuring Steven Newcomb, a Shawnee-Lenape scholar and author who has been studying and writing about U.S. federal Indian law and policy since the early 1980s, particularly the application of international law to Indigenous nations and peoples.

The 2022 ECR cohort aim to continue connecting via an ongoing set of activities, supported by U21 and the University of Edinburgh. A committee will be formed in the coming weeks to develop these ideas further.

The host and theme of the next U21 ECR Workshop will be announced later this year.