Environmental Humanities

We’re helping shape new laws around the mining of critical materials and manmade chemicals, as well as supporting more inclusive climate activism and sustainable farming around the world.

• Alex Cannon is studying how Mekong Delta farmers fight climate change through music with a £1.75m grant from the European Research Council.
• Jeremy Kidwell is looking at climate activism and inclusion, and found that Environmentalism has a diversity problem
• Professor Aleks Cavoski researches gender perspectives in environmental and climate policies, as well as deep-sea mining and critical materials, and spoke at a recent event on Women, the Environment and Sustainability
  
• Adam Ledger, Aleks Cavoski and Robert Lee are part of the Birmingham Plastics Network, an interdisciplinary team of over 60 researchers, working together to shape the fate and sustainable future of plastics.
• Aleks Cavoski and Robert Lee are part of Precisiontox,  project to better map the effects of manmade chemicals on animals and plants.

We’re examining prehistory to help with rewilding and using the arts and religion to engage the public with protecting our natural world.

• Historian David Gange writes and researches seascapes, kayaking and the cultural history of the sea
• David Smith examines historic insect records and prehistoric fossils of pollen to determine the viability of rewilding particular landscapes, in a project on Biodiversity and Land Use funded by Historic England
• Professor John Holmes’ Symbiosis interdisciplinary network promote the role and importance of the arts and humanities in natural history museums.
• We are the home of the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion

We’re working with scientists and practitioners to compose music, poetry and plays that deal with our relationship to nature, as well as nurturing sustainable practices in the creative industries.

•  A Virtual Tour of Ruskin Land, along with other education resources in partnership with BIFoR
• The Literature and Science Lab, led by John Holmes, explores connections between the sciences, humanities and the arts. 
• Alexandra Harris and Jessica Faye’s Arts of Place – landscape | locality | imagination is a meeting-point online for all who care what we make of our surroundings.
• Adam Ledger is demonstrating how theatre can engage with environmental issues at Performance and the Environment.
• Our MA Film and TV: Research and Production students took part in the BAFTA Albert Training for sustainable TV production
  
• Isabel Galleymore’s eco-poetry explores the ways in which we engage with the natural world.

All of the following courses contain focus on or include environmentalism and sustainability. But every undergraduate at the College of Arts and Law can also take a module in sustainability.

Undergraduate

• BSc Natural Sciences
• BA Liberal Arts and Sciences
• BA Digital Media and Creative Communications
• BA Digital Media and Communications and English
• BA English Literature and Creative Writing

Postgraduate

• MA International Heritage (includes Heritage Conservation Management module which covers key concepts such as stewardship, sustainability and visitor management)
• MA Africa and Development modules (e.g. Environment and Sustainable Development)
• LLM Energy and Environmental Law by distance learning
• LLM Global Energy and Environmental Law
• LLM Environmental, Social and Governance Law and Policy
• MA Film and TV

• International Conference of Three Societies on Literature and Science in April.
• The Transformative Humanities lectures.
• Culture Forward’s second sustainability event in May with local cultural partners.
• The CAL Sustaintability Group conference, led by Aleks Cavoski and Karen Wenell, in May.
• Isabel Galleymore’s doctoral workshop on the environmental humanities on the 24th April.