Not just a pretty place

How our sense of place may help us to connect with a more sustainable way of life.

A newly formed Environmental Humanities Group is bringing together disciplines from across the GW4 Alliance (Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter Universities) to think creatively and collectively about the roles of sense of place and cultural memory in motivating more sustainable ways of living.

The GW4 Environmental Humanities Group will forge a new community of researchers in the human sciences focused on raising the profile and collaborative potential of interdisciplinary work on environmental problems in Wales, the South West and internationally. The core research team and network of affiliated partners will bring together disciplines that have been working in isolation (such as historians, cultural geographers, philosophers, political scientists and educationalists) to think creatively and collectively about the critical contribution humanities-led research can make in current debates. All with a shared interest and commitment to addressing one of the most pressing challenges of our time: climate and environmental change.

The Group will be running two workshops to begin the discussion, and to create the necessary environment to support and nurture future research by building a postgraduate community that will contribute to expand the critical capacity of environmental humanities research in Wales and the South West.

The workshops will be run on 1 and 2 December in Exeter.  Please contact Dr Ria Dunkley for further information: DunkleyRA@cardiff.ac.uk