Arts, Design & Architecture

Environmental humanities

Environmental studies at UNSW

Aiding restorative & regenerative futures

Your education in environmental humanities at UNSW will provide you with a solid foundation to engage with contemporary social and environmental issues, and become the environment and society custodians the world needs today. 

Environmental Humanities at UNSW is made up of a collective of individuals practising and supporting engaged ecocultural research and teaching. We're committed to critically and creatively aiding in efforts to bring about restorative and regenerative futures.

Your study will examine current environmental and societal complexities and how solutions are interwoven and entangled with questions of culture, knowledge, meaning, values, ethics and politics.

Rethinking our approach to social science & humanities 

At UNSW, we adopt transdisciplinary and innovative modes of research and teaching. Our work interlinks with geography, critical social theory, cultural studies, environmental communication, history, philosophy, science and technology studies (STS), anthropology, legal geography and urban studies.

Our research and teaching are informed by the proposition that approaches to social science and humanities must be rethought and engage with new and extraordinarily old ways of knowing and being.

We use environmental and social justice framing across our research and teaching, and our work is often collaborative and action-based, actively working with communities locally and globally.

Throughout your study, you’ll examine and understand the interplay of sociocultural factors that influence today’s environmental and societal complexities. Our educators are passionate about engaging students in critically and creatively questioning contemporary human ecological relations.

Our research 

As environmental humanities scholars, we critically engage with the urgent issues of these times, which we understand as contextualised in long histories of human social and ecological interactions. Our research has the main intention of recognising and creating safe and thriving spaces – environmentally, culturally and socially – for all beings.

Find out more about our research in environment and society.

Study

Environment & Society's acknowledgement

We acknowledge the Gadigal and Bedigal people of the Eora nation, the Traditional Custodians of this Land within which we work, as well as the First Nations custodians of all lands and waters. It is our goal to teach and do research seeking out restorative relations between peoples and Country as a way of paying our respect to Elders – past, present, and emerging – and to extend that respect to all beings.