The unfolding environmental crisis, from climate change to biodiversity loss, poses fundamental questions about human society’s relationship with the natural environment. Concepts such as intergenerational justice, stewardship of the environment and shared environmental futures are no longer just abstract notions but link to very tangible, pressing concerns at the heart of the Anthropocene moment. Education, both formal schooling and informal learning, has a critical role to play in shaping these conversations and the futures that are desirable and possible in the Anthropocene. This project will explore education’s changing social purpose in the Anthropocene through empirical, on-the-ground research in learning communities either in the Global North or in the Global South, with a particular focus on intergenerational dialogue and imaginations of alternative futures.
Bonneuil, Christophe, and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. The Shock of the Anthropocene. London: Verso, 2017.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021.
Haraway, Donna, Noboru Ishikawa, Scott F. Gilbert, Kenneth Olwig, Anna L. Tsing, and Nils Bubandt. ‘Anthropologists Are Talking – About the Anthropocene’. Ethnos 81, 3 (2016): 535–64.
Komatsu, Hikaru, Jeremy Rappleye, and Iveta Silova. ‘Culture and the Independent Self: Obstacles to Environmental Sustainability?’ Anthropocene 26 (2019): 100198.
Litfin, Karen. ‘Person/Planet Politics: Contemplative Pedagogies for a New Earth’. In New Earth Politics: Essays from the Anthropocene, edited by Simon Nicholson and Sikina Jinnah, 115–34. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2016.
Malm, Andreas, and Alf Hornborg. ‘The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative’. The Anthropocene Review 1, no. 1 (2014): 62–69.
Sutoris, Peter. ‘Politicising ESE in Postcolonial Settings: The Power of Historical Responsibility, Action and Ethnography’. Environmental Education Research 25, 4 (2019): 601–12.
Sutoris, Peter. Educating for the Anthropocene: Schooling and Activism in the Face of Slow Violence. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2022.
Yusoff, Kathryn. ‘Politics of the Anthropocene: Formation of the Commons as a Geologic Process’. Antipode 50, 1 (2018): 255–76.
The research questions explored in this project will include: How suitable are existing conceptions and practices of education to humanity’s survival in the Anthropocene? In what ways, if any, might existing educational practice have contributed to environmental decay? What ideas about the human-nature relationship can drive a (re)imagination of the social role of education in the Anthropocene?
This is an ethnographic research project, which will rely on extensive fieldwork research, a deep immersion in the field, relationships of trust with research participants and meaningful co-production of knowledge between the researcher and the researched. Depending on research location, language competency in local language may be required. The use of innovative and transdisciplinary methods will be encouraged.