Labiba Rukhsana

Labiba is a recipient of the Bloomsbury Scholarship. The supervisory committee guiding her interdisciplinary project is a collaboration between the School of Law at SOAS and the Environmental Health team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). 

Labiba’s doctoral research applies an environmental justice lens to the governance of water and antimicrobial resistance in Bangladesh. Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) has been recognised as a wicked problem, crossing sectors and borders, and a major One Health challenge, leading to quadripartite collaboration between health, veterinary, agriculture and environmental bodies, but technical solutions and human health remain priorities.

Widespread misuse and overuse of antimicrobials together with structural barriers, like lack of access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and healthcare services, environmental stressors, like pollution and climate change, drive up resistance in microbes, leading to major health, economic and environmental damage with disproportionate impacts on vulnerable groups like women, elderly and those living in poverty or with disability. Bangladesh has high levels of AMR with significant local and global impacts. Labiba’s research explores the complex ways the governance of water, AMR and environmental justice are entangled within societies and ecosystems.

Alongside her research, Labiba tutors the undergraduate International Environmental Law module and works with the Environmental Law Advice Clinic at SOAS and is a member of the Law, Environment and Development Centre (LEDC). Labiba is qualified as a Barrister and Solicitor in Ontario, Canada and as a Solicitor in England and Wales and has experience in asylum, immigration, housing, family and civil law practice. Labiba’s community engagements include mentoring, organising charity and community events, volunteering with migrant and civil rights organisations and a school governing board. Labiba lives in London with her husband and two young children.

• Environmental justice, international environmental law
• Antimicrobial resistance, antimicrobial use
• Pharmaceutical regulation
• Climate (im)mobility/displacement/migration
• Climate Justice
• Human rights to water and sanitation,
• Water and other environmental pollution
• SDGs
• Planetary health
• Health-environment-human rights nexus