Geographies of Heat

ROUNDTABLE: GEOGRAPHIES OF HEAT

(Geographies of Life Research Cluster with Elemental Kinship and the IMH Weather, Climate and Health theme)

Tuesday, 9 December 2025, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (GMT), W414 (Geography building) and by zoom at this link).

As planetary temperatures rise, heat is no longer a passive environmental backdrop but an active agent shaping social, political, and material landscapes. This roundtable event moves beyond climatological data to discuss the uneven, embodied, and affective geographies of thermal experience. Presentations conceptualise heat as a dynamic and socially charged agent that reshapes territories, bodies, and ecosystems.

Presenters:

Professor Glenn McGregor, Durham University

Title: The Heatwave Imperative

Dr Mildred O. Ajebon, Durham University

Title: Rethinking Gendered Autonomy and Integrity under Chronic Heat Violence

Dr Hannah Della Bosca, Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney

Title: The Value of Discomfort in Processes of Just Transformation

Dr Maximilian Gregor Hepach, Durham University

Title: Medical Meteorologies of Sunlight

Biographies:

Professor Glenn McGregor, Durham University, Geography Department

Bio: Presently Professor of Climatology in the Department of Geography at Durham University UK, Glenn has published widely including several valuable overviews on ‘heat and health’, ‘humidity a primer for public health researchers’ and ‘El Nino Southern Oscillation and Health: an overview for climate and health researchers’. Added to this, Glenn recently published the book ‘Heatwaves: Causes, Consequences and Responses’ (Springer) and co-edited ‘Urban Climate Science for Developing Healthy Cities’ (Springer). Presently Glenn is leading the revision of the WMO’s guidance for developing heat-health warning systems, for which he was the co-ordinating lead author of the original 2015 publication. Glenn has also contributed to two IPCC reports as a lead author (6AR and SREX) and has been a member the WMO’s steering committee for the Global Heat Health Information Network (GHHIN) and is Chair of the External Advisory Board for the UK Health Security Agency’s Health Protection Unit’s research programme on climate and health.

Dr Mildred O. Ajebon, Durham University, Geography Department

Bio: Dr Mildred Oiza Ajebon is a Quantitative and Health Geographer and Career Development Fellow in Human Geography at Durham University. Her work sits at the intersection of climate, health, and gendered inequalities, with a current focus on how prolonged humid heat generates

bodily precarity among women in Nigeria’s informal economies. She brings over a decade of experience in designing and analysing large-scale surveys and spatial datasets across the UK and Nigeria, translating complex evidence into insights for academic, policy, and community audiences. Her publications include contributions to BMJ Open and GeoJournal.

Dr Hannah Della Bosca, University of Sydney, Sydney Environment Institute

Bio: Hannah Della Bosca is a PhD candidate in Sociology and Criminology at the University of Sydney with an interdisciplinary background in critical environmental justice and multispecies justice. She has contributed to a range of projects at the Sydney Environment Institute exploring environmental governance, community experiences of disaster, environmental justice activism, and multispecies interventions. Her recent publications on sweat and thermal comfort bring a sensory-materialist lens to questions of systemic climate justice. Her doctoral research explores vulnerability as a framework for multispecies justice, with an applied focus on ant-human relations.

Dr Maximilian Gregor Hepach, Durham University, Geography Department

Bio: Maximilian Gregor Hepach is Assistant Professor (Research) in Geography at Durham University. His current project titled ‘Under pressure: a historical and cultural geography of meteorosensitivity’ examines the different ways weather’s impact on health and well-being have been understood historically, and how those differences play into present day weather-health warning practices under pressure from climate change. Previously, he was project coordinator and postdoctoral research with Weather Reports (2022-2024, Potsdam, AHRC & DFG).His recent publications include an editorial to a Special Issue for Media+Environment on “Wind Humanities: An Elemental Media Approach”: https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.127444