Extreme temperatures already claim more lives around the world than any other natural hazard and under climate change this risk is increasing. Nevertheless, whilst the scale of the problem is increasingly recognised, understanding the lived experience of excess heat is a major research challenge.

A key issue facing such efforts is that heat stress is socially as well as geographically determined. The thermal experience of climate change is thus determined both by one’s position in space, and one’s position in society. The jobs we do, the roles we play in society, the conditions we work in, and our freedom within those roles, all shape our exposure to the changing climate. Recognising that the complexity and uniqueness of the climate crisis means we cannot continue to plan for it using the tools of the past, Oppressive Heat brings together a brand new suite of conceptual and methodological tools with which to analyse, interpret and address the dynamic global geography of thermal exposure under climate change.

Focusing on Cambodia, one of the world’s hottest and most humid countries, Oppressive Heat will show how climate impacts are shaped by positionality within the dynamic and interconnected global workplace. Aiming to initiate and develop a crucial new social-environmental scientific nexus on the working body under climate change, we work actively with governments, unions and scholars to reshape global understanding of heat stress in our warming world.