Environment & Health - a multi-diciplinary graduate school

The University of Gothenburg now launches a new graduate school to study the relationship between human health and the environment, from a number of different perspectives.

An initial 14 PhD-projects hav been singled out to participate in the graduate school's first phase. An additional 10 projects will be initiated in the second phase, scheduled to start at the end of 2009. Thus, fully developed, the graduate school will comprise 24 PhD-projects, representing a vareity of reserach departments at University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology, such as Medicine, Political Science, Philosophy, Chemistry, Work Science, Consumer Science, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Product and Production Development.

The area of special interest for all projects in the graduate school is the overlap zone between the traditional environment and health reserach areas respectively. Both environmental and helth perspectivs are, directly or inderectly, to be considered in all projects. In this case we define the term "health" as the physical health and well being of humans, eg. disease and ability to function in society. The meaning of the term "environment" streches from the classical definitions of environmental disturbances like air and water pollution, noise and radioactivity to other potentially health affecting phenomena, like life habits and psychosocial factors, primarily originating from societal organisation.

The initial funding from University of Gothenburg is 20 milion SEK. The graudate school is co-funded by Chalmers University of Technology and the Västra Götaland Region and co-ordinated by the Centre for Environment and Sustaianbility (GMV).