Environmental Humanities

What are the Environmental Humanities?

Environmental Humanities is an interdisciplinary field of research that explores the relationships between people, culture and the environment in an age of global ecological crises.

Environmental Humanities examines how narratives, norms, history, aesthetics, power and ethics shape our understanding of nature, responsibility, history and the future. The field offers critical and creative approaches to issues such as sustainability and climate change, while emphasising that environmental questions are always human questions, inseparable from our relationships with the more-than-human world.

Research in the Environmental Humanities often takes as its starting point some of the most urgent challenges facing society today, including climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, conflicts over natural resources and the transition to renewable energy. We investigate both historical and contemporary ways of understanding nature and our use of it, while examining how issues of power and social justice are intertwined with ecological conditions.

Examples include:

• What does it mean to be human on a damaged planet?
• What do media representations of melting glaciers reveal about our culture, and how do they shape the way we understand climate change?
• How can speculative storytelling open up alternative visions of the future?

The Department's Research Profile

At the Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion (LIR), research in the Environmental Humanities includes ecocriticism, environmental history and theology. Our research explores the relationships between people, culture and the environment, contributing new perspectives on how we understand the ecological challenges of the past, present and future.

Our research encompasses ecocriticism, literary and creative future studies, environmental humanities, history of ideas, theological studies with ethical and political perspectives on ecology, and research at the intersection of ecology and religion, including Christian theology and continental philosophy.

Research areas range from studies of the Anthropocene and early modern understandings of cold, development and creativity to investigations of hope and futurity, how the concept of nature has changed over time, walking studies, environmental migration research and much more.

The department hosts the international network One by Walking, which brings together researchers in walking studies from around the world and organises a monthly online seminar series.