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Environment

College of Arts and Law

The urgent need for climate action and adaptation poses a huge challenge for culture, society, and law as well as for science and technology. Our researchers are breaking new ground in every aspect of this challenge, driven by our staunch commitment to environmental humanities.

If we are to reach a sustainable future, we first need to be able to imagine it.

Professor John Holmes
Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture

Our research is helping us to uncover the historical roots of climate events and their implications for social inclusion, to explore how popular culture and religion help us to understand and respond to climate change, and to create the legal and regulatory tools that can enable a just and effective climate transition.

  • Can Tho musicians

    Equitable development in the Mekong Delta

    Featured project

    Profesor Alexander Cannon is studying how Mekong Delta farmers fight climate change through music with a £1.75m grant from the European Research Council.

    SoundDecisions project

Environmental regulation and inclusion

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

  • Professor Alex Cannon is studying how Mekong Delta farmers fight climate change through music with a £1.75m grant from the European Research Council.
  • Professor Aleksandra and Professor Robert Lee are part of , a project to better map the effects of manmade chemicals on animals and plants.
  • Our academics are involved with the £8.2m RECREATE project to develop a circular economy for technology-critical materials in the UK.
  • Our Law students have worked on international policy recommendations for recycling electric vehicle batteries, as part of the Pro Bono Group Environmental Law Matters initiative.
  • Dr Jeremy Kidwell is investigating climate activism and inclusion, and found that Environmentalism has a diversity problem.
  • Professor Aleksandra Cavoski researches gender perspectives in environmental and climate policies, as well as deep-sea mining and critical materials, and .
  • Professor Adam Ledger, Professor Aleksandra and Professor 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
  • Professor Janine Clark's Leverhulme-funded project is developing a more inclusive approach to transitional justice through consideration for more-than-human factors such as rivers, mountains, oceans, animals, plants and soil.

Environmental history and religion

Using archaeological and historical methods, we’re learning from prehistory to help with rewilding, and harnessing creativity, the arts and religious beliefs to engage the public with protecting our natural world.

  • Dr David Smith examines historic insect records and prehistoric fossils of pollen to determine the viability of rewilding particular landscapes and reintroducing extinct flagship native species, like European bison, in a project on .
  • Professor John Holmes’ Symbiosis interdisciplinary network uncovers the history and importance of the arts and humanities in natural history museums, sparking new collaborations with world-famous museums today.
  • We are the home of the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion.
  • Historian Dr David Gange .
  • Professor Henry Chapman investigates the potential that

How we interpret and respond to the climate crisis

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.

  • Professor John Holmes and Dr Dion Dobrzynski have worked with the Guild of George and BIFoR to create – a 100-acre oak woodland in the Wyre Forest.
  • Professor Annie Mahtani explores environmental sound and develops , amplifying sonic characteristics that are not normally audible to the naked ear.
  • The Literature and Science Lab, led by Professor John Holmes, explores connections between the sciences, humanities and the arts.
  • Professor Alexandra Harris and Dr Jessica Fay’s is a meeting-point online for all who care about the cultural histories of our surroundings, fostering rich understandings of places past and present.
  • Professor Adam Ledger is demonstrating how theatre can engage with environmental issues through .
  • Our MA Film and TV: Research and Production students took part in the .
  • Dr Isabel Galleymore’s explores the ways in which we engage with the natural world.

Environmental and sustainability-focused degree courses

All of the following courses 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

Postgraduate