PhD project summary:
Climate change and rising heat have unsettled established infectious disease patterns, creating a moment of public health urgency. Despite the 21st century focus on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), countries face ‘increasingly frequent waves of emerging and re-emerging infectious disease’, without fully effective countermeasures (Wang et al. 2024).
In India, the phenomenon of ‘mystery fever’ outbreaks occurs like clockwork during and after the monsoon. These fevers are caused by common, underdiagnosed infectious diseases. They cause severe illness, significant mortality and reveal gaps in public health governance. The most common underdiagnosed fever in India, and in Asia, is scrub typhus, a bacterial disease carried by mites. It leads to life threatening complications and disproportionately impacts rural vulnerable communities. Its outbreaks are now occurring outside known endemic sites, encapsulating a climate change driven disease unruliness.
In this context, this project–rooted in social anthropology and global health–raises critical questions on how health governance can evolve beyond emergency response to create outbreak-resilient communities. The project will be embedded with Sangwari, a non-profit organisation based in Chhattisgarh, an eastern Indian state. Sangwari was established in Surguja district in 2020, by a team of doctors with extensive rural healthcare experience. They work with local communities to implement a community-led model of healthcare. The project builds on their efforts to bridge gaps between underserved indigenous populations and public healthcare.
The project studies lived experiences and community responses of afflicted groups, and the community-participatory model of rural health governance. It rethinks public health strategies and scientific epistemics for evolving human-environment relations, and works towards innovative, sustained health governance as a health adaptation measure. It draws on diverse social science methods to fill crucial epistemic gaps in national and global infectious disease metrics, and to co-create novel data and innovative health practices that can be mobilised to lend ‘new’ urgency to the ‘old’ problem of fever. It locates itself in the emergent global problem of a dual burden of disease, both infectious and NCDs, to examine the reinvention of ‘fever’ as re-emergent health concern. It investigates the empirical work of public health professionals in eastern India, to generate novel health and scientific epistemics of potential use to scientific and advocacy communities globally.
The overarching goal of this research is to meaningfully contribute to the effort to build outbreak-resilient communities. Through rigorous research and sustained advocacy, this study will help save lives in Surguja and provide a replicable model for understanding and mitigating the convergent crises of infectious disease and climate change worldwide.
Supervisor(s):
Carlo Caduff: carlo.caduff@kcl.ac.uk
Shagufta Bhangu: shagufta.bhangu@kcl.ac.uk
CASE non-academic partner: Sangwari – People’s Association For Equity & Health: https://sangwari.net/
LISS Institution: King’s College London, Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, Department of Global Health & Social Medicine
PhD Programme: PhD programme in Global Health and Social Medicine
Full-time / Part-time: Full-time
1+3.5 or +3.5 studentship: +3.5
Fee Eligibility: Home‑eligible applicants only (UKRI eligibility guidance)
How to apply:
To apply, please complete and return the documents below to the project supervisor(s) directly:
- LISS DTP CASE application form
- Academic transcripts
- References
- Additional information as stipulated in the CASE project listing
Additionally, all applicants must complete:
- LISS DTP Diversity Monitoring Form (online)
Closing date for applications: 2nd February 2026
Interviews date: week commencing 16th February 2026