The Institute for Environment, Conservation, and Sustainability will support research to develop evidence-based solutions to address the challenges of a rapidly changing environment due to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, loss of biosphere integrity, and loss of biodiversity. The Institute will create conditions for interdisciplinary and historically grounded conversations about the relationships between people and the natural world.
Potential research themes:
- the impact of climate change on human communities
- the effectiveness of public policy on climate outcomes
- Indigenous perspectives on the natural world
- publicly engaged environmental research
- the interactions among plants, soil, water, and air
- the effects of climate change from the cellular to the ecosystem levels
- sustainable agriculture
- just transitions
- ecological restoration
- environmental sustainability
- nature-based climate solutions.
Inaugural Director Imre Szeman is newly appointed as a professor of Human Geography at UTSC, and teaches and conducts research in energy humanities, environmental studies, and social and political philosophy. From 2021-2022, he was the Climate Critic for the Green Party of Canada. He is co-founder of the Petrocultures Research Group, which explores the socio-cultural dimensions of energy use and its implications for energy transition and climate change, and the leader of After Oil, a collective which has produced After Oil (West Virginia University Press, 2016) and Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice (University of Minnesota Press, 2022). He is author of the book On Petrocultures: Globalization, Culture and Energy (WVUP, 2019).
Contact Inaugural Director Imre Szeman here.
Follow Imre Szeman's Twitter account here.
