Planet Earth

Modern Western societies are used to styling themselves as “large-scale” and “complex”. As “care” emerges as a significant area of economic growth, while simultaneously “felt loneliness” is now acknowledged as an important determinant of poor health outcomes, we are presented with an opportunity to think through just what those terms mean. In this talk, I examine the Aka, a group of people who live in the Democratic of the Congo, in terms of some of my interest in “care”, from recovery from addiction to thinking through how an ageing society imagines a place for its older members.

I rescue meteorological data from Sub-Saharan Africa in ICARUS, Maynooth University, with the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The recovery of meteorological data is vitally important when revising climates of the past & predicting climates of the future. Parts of Europe have climate data dating to the 17th/18th centuries, many African countries data only dates to the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Africa is a vulnerable region to the effects of climate change. Long record data is required to better understand how the African climate is changing & to help Sub-Saharan Africa adapt to changes

Our muscles allow us to move, and work and are critical for almost all functions of living. Our modern lifestyle does not lend itself to the development of muscular strength. Muscle health is one of the most important aspects of our health which is often overlooked. In this talk, I will argue that it will be disastrous for our future if we do not encourage our society to make our muscles bigger and stronger.

In this discussion I will describe a remarkably successful new treatment where patients’ own immune cells are improved to treat their blood cancers. My research looks at ways that immune cells can be further improved so that different types of cancer could be tackled.