Theme: Nature's Geographies

Our research within this theme focuses on interactions between nature and society, environment and culture. Multiple perspectives are brought to bear on experiences of environments and the kinds of issues and conflicts that play out in diverse natural and semi-natural places. We are interested in how environments are valued, and the ways in which people’s embodied, creative and sensory engagements both shape and are shaped by natural spaces. Our work also engages with the politics of environments and the reflexive ways in which political economies, societies and cultures are produced by and co-productive of natures and environments.

Environmental aesthetics

Our work in environmental aesthetics explores the nature of aesthetic and artistic interactions with environment and place through sensory, imaginative and emotional forms of engagement. We are also interested in the character of aesthetic value and its role in environmental conservation and policy.

Environmental ethics

Within environmental ethics, we are especially interested in non-instrumental forms of relationship between environments, human and non-human animals; and the nature and extent of moral responsibility in the context of climate change. Our research in environmental ethics and aesthetics engages with philosophical and historical approaches, as well as qualitative methodologies.

Environment and development

The relationships between environment and development are multiple and complex. We bring together perspectives that seek to understand both the potentials and pitfalls of development for addressing environmental issues as well as exploring how environments are productive of particular sorts of development endeavours. Our interests range from perspectives that seek to critically evaluate both ‘development’ and ‘environment’ to more policy oriented work that seeks to bring academic theory into practice through engagement with development projects around the world.

Political ecology brings together our interests in development theory, globalisation and social inequalities with concern for environment. Our work explores how environments and social justice are intertwined and the importance of retaining a critical stance towards the environment-society nexus. Drawing from a variety of theoretical perspectives, we trace how global networks produce particular kinds of inequalities, land uses, urban environments and conflicts such that we can better understand how socio-natures emerge.

Greenspaces

Using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies we explore the connections (both contemporary and historical) between greenspace and human health and well-being. Our interests range from the ways in which urban neighbourhood environments influence health and health behaviours of individuals, the cultivation of edible crops in inner-city areas, to the wide-spread promotion of outdoor pursuits in the early twentieth century as a means of promoting healthier lifestyles.

Methods

Ethnography, GIS, interviewing, participatory methods, policy and literature reviews, regression modelling, work shadowing

Places

UK, Europe, New Zealand, USA, South Asia and Latin America

Projects

The Sublime in Modern Philosophy (Emily Brady). Funded by the Carnegie Trust.
Aesthetics of Nature: A Philosophical History (Emily Brady). Funded by a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellowship (Princeton Centre for Human Values) and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Fungible Carbon (Heather Lovell and Donald MacKenzie). Funded by a Nuffield Foundation New Career Development Fellowship.

People

This article was published on May 11, 2011