Inaugural Professorial Lecture – Jim Cotter

Lecture Title: "Exploring exercise, the environment, and their extremes."

Jim Cotter researches how stressors within exercise and the environment affect people’s physiological systems and functional abilities. The systems of most interest are cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, thermoregulatory and fluid regulatory. The stressors of most interest are heat, hypoxia, dehydration and orthostatic; these typically coexist within exercise itself and can hasten fatigue, but - when repeated - mediate the adaptations that improve physical fitness and health.

Environments that add to these stressors make physical activity more difficult but may be used adjunctively to improve adaptation, for example an athlete’s fitness, and even be used alone, for health outcomes of people who suffer through reduced mobility.

Jim’s interest in extreme environments includes how they are framed. Arguably, the built environment is uniquely dangerous and thus extreme because humans are physiologically ill-equipped to detect or adapt to life devoid of physical stressors.

You can view a live stream of this event by following this link: https://www.otago.ac.nz/its/services/teaching/streaming/otago466001.html

Refreshments will be available after the Lecture.