George Kirkham

The Viper and the Palm: space, immunity, and health in the governance of snakebite in Costa Rica

George is an environmental and health geographer interested in human-wildlife coexistence, intersecting toxic geographies, disease ecologies, the spaces of pharmaceutical production, and the digital mediation of disease governance. 

George draws on more-than-human geography, political ecology, and medical anthropology to investigate the governance of snakebite envenomation (SBE) in Costa Rica. His research with the Instituto Clodomiro Picado, an influential Costa Rican snakebite research and antivenom production centre, looks at antivenom production in Central America; the role of plantation agriculture in configuring snakebite’s emergence; and the making of SBE as a tropical disease.

George’s doctorate is funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council and St John’s College. 

Prior to starting his DPhil, George worked for the Wellcome Trust’s Snakebite Priority Area and Digital Team. This experience led him to his MSc research project, where he studied the implementation of SARPA, a snake translocation and antivenom access smartphone application developed by the Kerala Forest Department. This research inspired an interest in the digital mediation of disease governance, an area George engages with in collaboration with the Digital Ecologies research group.

• Kirkham, G. (2026) ‘Digital Disease Ecologies: Encounter, Datafication and the Digital Geographies of One Health’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, p. e70058.
• Thornber, K. et al. (2026) ‘Pharmaceutical pollution from health care: a systems-based strategy for mitigating risks to public and environmental health’, The Lancet Planetary Health, 0(0).
• Kirkham, G. (2025) ‘Making sense of snakebite: the place of biological toxins in social scientific analyses of toxicity’, BioSocieties, 20(4), pp. 745–761.
• Kirkham, G. (2024) ‘Snakes and smartphones: exploring transdisciplinary design collaborations for the governance of snakebite’, cultural geographies, 31(4), pp. 591–596.

Awards

• North Senior Scholar of Social Sciences, St John’s College, Oxford. 2025-2026
• University of Oxford, Grand Union Doctoral Training Programme. Economic and Social Research Council. 2023-2026
• University College London, UBEL Doctoral Training Programme. Economic and Social Research Council. 2023-2026 (declined)
• University of Exeter, Southwest Doctoral Training Programme. Economic and Social Research Council. 2023-2026 (declined
• University of Edinburgh, SGSS Doctoral Training Programme, Economic and Social Research Council 2023-2026 (declined)
• University College London. Research Excellence Scholarship. 2023-2026 (declined)
• University of Oxford. MSc Nature, Society and Environmental Governance Examiners' Award for Best Overall Performance 2022
• Jesus College Oxford Charles Green Award 2022
• Sir Richard Stapley Trust Postgraduate Award 2021-22