How environmental justice takes into account the ways embodied, gendered and everyday lived experiences are mediated by technological interventions marked by economic and social inequalities that require a rethinking of issues around reproduction, production and population growth.
The projects in this research area will explore how people and communities are facing dramatic ecological and economic change in an analysis of today’s disquieting troubles about: the impact of environmental degradation fueled by consumerism on both human and non-human lives; the difficulty to include queer movement’s analysis of environmental change in policy debates; the gendered governance of water; the ethical concerns around the escalating interdependence of bodies and technologies; and how advocates of reproductive freedom can address the problem of growing populations and scarce resources. What is new and exciting is the focus on the body as the first place where people experience the environment as well as the political struggle of people to claim control over their own biological, social and cultural embodied experiences. The research will move beyond the conventional environmental focus on nature that separates humans from their environments. Instead, it will look at how bodies, technologies and economies need to be understood as integral to understanding our material environment and ecological practice and theory.
The shared framework will look at:
- the concept of naturecultures and how to look at the interrelationship of human and non-human in changing ecologies and economies;
- the emerging narratives that can unmake and make new worlds in the “turn” to new eco-criticism and new eco-politics; and
- the interdependence of technologies, ecologies and bodies and the implication for sustainable development policy frameworks.
PhD Topics
- Social (re)production and the good life in a post-growth society: a feminist and queer perspective
- Liquid encounters – fluid conversations around water, environment, and gendered naturecultures
- Bodies, technologies and well-being
- Population growth and environmental justice: rethinking reproductive freedom