Professor Stephen Hinchliffe

Steve Hinchliffe holds the statutory chair in Environmental Geography at SoGE.

I work on socio-ecologies, or the relationships that link bodies, environments and social practices. Taking an approach that is informed by social and spatial theory, as well as work in Science, Technology and Society (STS), I work on the intersections of human, animal and environmental lives. Recent work has focused on zoonotic diseases (those that affect people and animals), livestock and food systems, the rise of and responses to antimicrobial resistance, and is increasingly interested in metabolic geographies (how for example human and nonhuman metabolisms respond to alterations in environments). My work is committed to theorising empirically, working with and developing social science fieldwork and methods to generate and revise social theoretical advances.

I received a BSc in Geography from the University of Durham and a PhD from the University of Bristol. Prior to joining SoGE, I was Professor of Geography at the University of Exeter, and co-director of the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environment of Health. I was formerly Lecturer, Reader and Professor of Geography at the Open University, and held posts at the Universities of Keele and Cambridge. I am an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and have served on the UK Government's Scientific Advisory Committee on Exotic Diseases, and the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Science Advisory Group's (DEFRA) Social Science Expert Group. I currently sit on OFFLU's Applied Epidemiology Working Group and recently advised the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group (SPI-B), a sub-group of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

Published books include the monograph Pathological Lives (Wiley Blackwell) and I have published widely on One Health, Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), Biosecurity, and human-nonhuman relations. Ongoing funded research includes political ecologies of AMR in Tanzania, bio-social securities in the UK, Bangladesh and South Africa, and developing just approaches to environmental issues that are characterised by multiple normativities. I hold a European Research Council Advanced grant (2026-2031) on biosocial security, which aims to develop alternative approaches to securing human and nonhuman animal health in a pandemic threatened world.

I am open to discussing potential PhD applications in most areas of environmental geography, though with a focus on food, health and nonhuman animals.