Claudia Fernandez de Cordoba Farini is a relational thinker and cross-pollinator working across food, climate, health, and more-than-human governance. Her work focuses on exposing and transforming the structural drivers of vulnerability that shape social and ecological systems, bridging science, policy, and imagination to open new pathways for change.

She co-led the development of World Health Organization’s regional strategy on food systems and climate change, spanning 38 Asia–Pacific countries. The strategy addressed structural health, environmental, and political–economic drivers, and was co-created through extensive consultation with governments, WHO offices, grassroots organisations, and regional partners.

Previously, Claudia co-authored the UK Government’s first strategic vision to institutionalise One Health at Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Developed through a participatory process with eight DEFRA teams and agencies, the vision established enabling conditions for cross-sectoral, preventive action on health challenges such as AMR, zoonotic disease, and pollution. She also supported the UK’s negotiations on the World Health Organisation Pandemic Accord, informing ratified commitments for upstream, socio-ecological approaches to reduce systemic risks.

Claudia is the founder of Living Imaginaries, a social enterprise that works with governments, cultural institutions, and communities to bring imagination, care, and multispecies justice into governance and institutional transformation. The initiative grows out of the intersection of her policy and practice work and her PhD research at University College London, which reimagines biodiversity governance through more-than-human ways of relating with the North Sea and its connected rivers.

Her current projects include supporting food systems transformation with Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency(PBL), Netherlands Food Partnership, and Wageningen University & Research, as well as reimagining marine and river governance in collaboration with Embassy of the North Sea and Dark Matter Labs.

While Head of Health Warnings at UCL Warning Research Centre, she worked on embedding ecological and social drivers into early warning systems for infectious diseases, contributing to initiatives with the World Bank, government agencies, and grassroots organisations such as Doctors with Africa CUAMM. She also worked in public policy consulting, supporting clients across healthcare, biotech, food, and environmental sectors to navigate regulatory, political, and sustainability challenges, including Net Zero transitions and food supply disruptions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Claudia holds cross-sector training in food systems (University of Oxford), public policy (London School of Economics and Political Science), and political ecology (Wageningen University & Research), alongside a first-class BSc in Science and Technology Studies from University College London. She is also a 2024 Planetary Health Equity Fellow at Australian National University.