Global Health and Geographical Imaginaries

In this introduction to our co-edited volume Global Health and Geographical Imaginaries, we reflect on the place of geography and geographical contributions in the study of global health. To date, geographers, in contrast to anthropologists and political scientists, have not yet carved out a disciplinary niche within the diffuse domain that makes up global health. This is surprising given that the compulsion to do and understand global health emerges largely from contexts that geographers have long engaged with: urbanisation, globalisation, political economy, risk, vulnerability, lifestyles, geopolitics, cultures, governance, development and the environment. We argue that this does not have to be the case and that, as the essays that make up this volume attest, there is an emerging body of exciting geographical contributions to what has been termed ‘critical global health studies’.