Sabrina Li

Spatial and social determinants of the 1857 yellow fever epidemic in Lisbon Author summary Yellow fever is a mosquito-borne disease transmitted to humans primarily through Aedes aegypti in urban areas. Currently, yellow fever is endemic in the tropical regions of South Americ...

What can a yellow fever epidemic from 170 years ago tell us about future risk in Europe? We digitised 19th-century data to map the 1857 Lisbon epidemic at neighbourhood scale—showing how urban environments shaped transmission and what it means for preparedness today.

Link: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

More details below. Please submit abstracts to Sabrina Li (Sabrina.li@kcl.ac.uk) and Varun Goel (varungoel@sc.edu) by March 10th, 2026! Any questions please get in touch. 3/3

We invite contributions that critically engage with the promise and pitfalls of GeoAI in relation to health inequality, health inequity, and justice transitions. We encourage submissions that are enthusiastic about GeoAI, as well as those that are skeptical, critical, or ambivalent. 2/3

Are you a scholar working at the intersection of GeoAI and public health and epidemiology? 🤖 🏥

Call for papers at the 2026 International Medical Geography Symposium Special Session - GeoAI for health equity: advances, pitfalls, and global challenges 🌏 1/3

🤝 You'll work with collaborators and mentors based at the UK Health Security Agency, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and John Hopkins University. 4/n

Any questions please get in touch with me Sabrina.li@kcl.ac.uk

Please share widely!!

🪴 We are a friendly, diverse, and supportive lab that believes creating impactful research comes from access to mentorship, tailored training, networking, and leadership and professional development. 3/n

Apply Now 🔗
📅 Deadline: 24th February 2026
✏️ Starting Date: April/May (Flexible)

Postdoc (GeoAI and Spatial Epidemiology):
lnkd.in/dv4Jj8B2

Postdoc (AI for Equitable Disease Modelling): lnkd.in/d8_76Vq5

RA (GeoAI, Infectious Diseases, and Health Equity):
lnkd.in/dQJmeFvb

2/n

Excited to start my @ukri.org Future Leaders Fellowship at @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social and lead the GeoAI for Health Equity Lab! We are hiring for 3 posts!! Join me to advance GeoAI research that strengthens epidemic preparedness and reduces healths inequities. 1/n

Photo of the biannual PGR/ecr health geography conference, in the old council chambers of university of Bristol

Photo of the biannual PGR/ecr health geography conference, in the old council chambers of university of Bristol

What a pleasure to be hosting the biannual @healthgeographyrgs.bsky.social PGR/ECR conference this year in Bristol! ✨ Wonderful papers on our first cluster "blue bodies" 🌊🌊 thank you for the funding, @rgsibg.bsky.social

Starting in Jan '26, my lab will have opportunities for 2 post-doctoral researchers, 1 research associate, and 1 fully-funded PhD student. Stay tuned for more details coming soon 👀!!

UKRI announces winners of £120 million Future Leaders Fellowships Research into the causes of lung cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are among 77 projects to be funded by UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowships.

Thrilled to share that I’ve been awarded a @ukri.org Future Leaders Fellowship! My lab will focus on embedding #equity in #health surveillance with #GeoAI to map how socio-environmental & individual vulnerabilities shape #disease risk.

www.ukri.org/news/ukri-an...

New #article from Li et al: A pyramid of human ecology of disease for pandemic preparedness
TL;DR: combine the triangle of human ecology and the triangle of disease ecology into a unified pyramid model.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Our framework trace emerging epidemic risks from increasing social and environmental disruptions. Prioritising biodiversity conservation, socio-environmental equity, and participatory decision-making will be key to strengthening pandemic preparedness.

In our paper, we:
✏️ Trace the history of human and disease ecology and why integration matters for complex epidemics
✏️ Focus on zoonotic diseases, drawing lessons from COVID-19
✏️ Demonstrate how the framework applies across all stages of an epidemic: emergence → spread → response

We propose the pyramid of human ecology of disease, showing how socio-ecological factors drive disease dynamics across space and time. This draws on the frameworks of human ecology and disease ecology, which span geography, sociology, epidemiology, and ecology.

How do human–environment interactions shape the spread of disease? Excited to share this theoretical contribution, now published in Social Science and Medicine. Co-authored with Mike Emch (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

📄 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Check out Chloe's new podcast series!📽️ This is great if you are still learning how to navigate academia as an early career researcher. Thanks Chloe for the invite. I had so much fun sharing my research and career journey and I hope our listeners will find it helpful.

ENRGHI 2025: Embodiment and water – blue bodies We are delighted to invite papers for the 22nd Emerging Researchers in Geographies of Health and Impairment (ENRGHI) Conference, a two-day event organised by and for postgraduate and early career r…

We are delighted to invite papers for the 22nd ENRGHI Conference, a two-day event organised by & for postgraduate & ECRs

Showcasing the breadth of health & wellbeing research, with a focus on Blue Bodies - human, animal & ecological connections to blue spaces

👉 ghwrg.wordpress.com/enrghi-2025-...

Practical tips for aspiring PIs Congratulations! You, a first-time PI have been awarded £500K. What do you now??

📣Calling our mid-career researchers: Our MCR sub-committee is hosting a webinar on practical tips for aspiring Principal Investigators!📣

In this 2hour workshop, Profs Simon Capewell & Ruth Dundas will share insights on planning + managing projects to improve your capability as a PI

bit.ly/44lfh6u

Model-Based Geostatistics Modern model-based geostatistics for point-referenced data. This package provides a simple interface to run spatial machine learning models and geostatistical models that estimate a continuous (raster...

🚨 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘁: 🚨 the 𝗺𝗯𝗴 package streamlines model-based geostatistics, with applications ranging from spatial ecology and epidemiology to regional planning.

If you want to predict spatial outcomes based on contextual factors, this package is for you! henryspatialanalysis.github.io/mbg/

This is so neat! Thanks for sharing.

Very pleased to have played a role in this important project!!

Unraveling varying spatiotemporal patterns of Dengue Fever and associated exposure-response relationships with environmental variables in three Southeast Asian countries before and during COVID-19 Author summary Dengue Fever (DF) is a typical tropical disease transmitted via mosquito bites. COVID-19 lockdowns have altered human-mosquito contact patterns that impacted DF transmission. Additional...

Out in @plos.org NTD! Our paper explores changes in dengue transmission in Southeast Asia before/after COVID-19. The pandemic has altered exposure-response relationship at both national and regional levels. Led by Wei Luo (National U of Singapore) and Zhihao Liu (U of Hong Kong).

Nexus Between Exposure to Natural Outdoor Environments and Cognitive Competence among Older Adults in China With a rapidly aging population and an increasing number of older people with cognitive impairment, a multitude of social problems could arise. The natural outdoor environments (NOEs) surrounding r...

New paper! Using the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, we look at how exposure to residential natural outdoor environments, such as green spaces and freshwater blue spaces, affects cognitive competence of older adults in China. Led by Anqi Chen and Kai Cao, link to paper below.

🚨 We're interested in convening a panel for the @rgsibg.bsky.social Annual Conference 2025 with 5 minute quickfire talks from current health geography PGRs, introducing their work & how they relate to the overall theme of creative geographies

Please get in touch if you are interested :)

#GHWRG

Call for papers at the 2025 @rgsibg.bsky.social AM! If you are working at the intersection of health equalities, blue and green spaces, and urban planning, we would love to hear from you! Pls submit your abstract to wendee.zhang@ouce.ox.ac.uk and myself (sabrina.li@nottingham.ac.uk) by Thu 28/02.