Looking to build for the future, Birkbeck is currently transforming its curriculum and looking at how it can embed environmental and sustainability education across all disciplines within the College. This is not a quick or easy transformation, as we see areas where good provision already exists across the curriculum and we can build on these, while also looking at areas where expansion in terms of the kinds of courses available to Birkbeck students will add to students' development and understanding of environment and sustainability issues. We are looking to our students as the future change-makers, and so a key part of this is the development of knowledge and skills they can use in their future careers as well as their daily lives.

The work in this area is being developed over the next two years by the Environmental Education Project team - Academic Co-Directors for Aideen Foley, Stephen Willey, and Dale Mineshima-Lowe , who are working on the first strand mentioned above (Science, Environment & Sustainability), along with our Project Lead, Joanne Leal, Pro-Vice Chancellor Academic Projects, and Project Manager, Kayleigh Woods Harley.

We would like to welcome members of the UN PRME London & SE Local Network and the UK & Ireland Chapter to join us in discussing our strategy and exchanging experiences. Coffee and tea will be served with plenty of networking opportunity. If you have dietary requirements, please email Kayleigh at k.woodsharley@bbk.ac.uk. Any other queries, please email Dr Pamela Yeow p.yeow@bbk.ac.uk. 

Bio:

Dale Mineshima-Lowe, Academic Co-Director for Environmental Education Projects and Associate Lecturer in Social Sciences

Dale is an Associate Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences teaching modules in both politics and environmental geography at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including teaching the module on climate change and environmental hazards and serving as an examiner for the MSc Global Environment & Sustainability distance learning programme run as a Birkbeck-University of London course. She is Managing Editor for the Center of International Relations, a thinktank based in Washington D.C., an OSUN-CLASP Fellow (2021- 2023), a member of the ECPR standing group steering committee for Teaching & Learning Politics (2020-2023), and visiting faculty at Parami University (USA/Myanmar) and Bard College (NY, USA). Her current research interests focus on learning and teaching pedagogies, digital technologies in teaching and use for civic activism, and examining how social capital / 'bottom-up' networks work in environmental policymaking, and for combatting corruption. Starting in Autumn 2023, Dale will be part of a group of 20 researchers & practitioners starting a 3-year project (2023-2026) focused on Democratizing Globalization being led by OSUN partner institution Bard College Berlin, Germany, organized with the OSUN-Hannah Arendt Humanities Network (based at Bard College, NY, USA).

Aideen Foley, Academic Co-Director for Environmental Education Projects and Senior Lecturer in Environmental Geography
Aideen is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Geography, teaching modules on climate science, environmental policy, and the social dimensions of climate change. She has served as Programme Director for the MSc Environment and Sustainability and MSc Climate Change. She is a recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (2022), and a Fellow of Bard College’s Centre for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy (2022-2024). She has served as an External Examiner for the University of Northampton’s undergraduate Physical Geography programmes (2019-2023). She organised Birkbeck’s participation in the Worldwide Teach-In for Climate Justice in 2022. With a BSc in Applied Mathematics and Experimental Physics and a PhD in Geography focusing on climate model evaluation, Aideen’s research draws on both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her research focuses on climate and environmental hazards and change at regional and local scales, particularly in small island communities. For the past four years, she has been the Principal Investigator on SUNRISE, a NERC-funded project exploring climate resilience in Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, and Orkney. She recently contributed evidence to a House of Commons International Development Committee inquiry into the UK’s Small Island Developing State Strategy, and is also an Associate Editor for Island Studies Journal.

Stephen Willey. Academic Co-Director for Environmental Education Projects and Lecturer in Creative Writing
Steve is an internationally published poet and critic with poetry translated into German and Arabic. He has served as the Programme Director of BA Creative Writing and English, MA Creative and Critical Writing, and MA Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. In these roles he designed and implemented 'Writing the Planet', a trans-historical, cross-disciplinary, MA module that works at the intersection of ecology and literature. He is researching connections between acts of local and creative solidarity and ecological grief in the London Borough of Newham. This site-specific research considers a 4-acre plot of land on the Southern tip of Epping Forest which is being rewilded after being used as the site for a temporary mortuary to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. Dr Willey investigates similar connections between ecology and grief in collaboration with partners in the West Bank, Palestine, and holds a Team Based Fieldwork Research Award from the Council for British Research in the Levant. Here he investigates the impact of military occupation on the natural environment and educational opportunity. His most recent full-length collection is Living In: Creative Solidarities in Palestine (Oxford: The Onslaught Press, 2020). Dr Willey serves as the external examiner of MA Creative Writing at Roehampton University and has also served as Writer in Residence at the Tucson Poetry Centre, Arizona, and the Palestine Writing Workshop in Birzeit.