The minor will give you the necessary tools to be an integral part of transformative change towards a sustainable and just future. This requires critically reflecting on diverse environmental values and visions, but also developing the ability to translate these values and visions into concrete options for research, policy, and design. Sustainability presents a challenge as well as an opportunity for designers, engineers, business leaders, and administrators to reflect upon the values that shape research and innovation today, and to co-produce a sustainable future for all – including both humans and non-humans.
THE MINOR IS SPLIT INTO FIVE interdisciplinary MODULES:
- Foundations in Environmental Ethics
- Human-Nature Relations
- Sustainable Consumption and Food Ethics
- Climate Ethics
- Sustainable Technologies
The overall aim of the minor is to enable students to develop conceptual critiques and propose societal changes for more sustainable solutions and transformations, addressing social, environmental, and climate injustices within policy and design. Existing and future technologies and practices are bound up with human-nature relationships, and tied to the local contexts in which we live, including urban, rural and peripheral spaces. Environmental philosophy systematically examines the moral value of non-human entities and the interplay between these values, culture, institutions, technologies, practices, and consumer lifestyles.
The minor is designed to address real-world challenges for sustainability to take critical environmental social sciences and environmental philosophy “into the field”, enhancing the tools students have already learned in their Bachelor studies. To complement plural perspectives in environmental philosophy, this minor also offers a variety of conceptual lenses, especially decoloniality, biocultural conservation, science and technology studies (including ‘action-based’ research), and historical studies to examine the values that shape a just and sustainable future for both non-human and human entities, for both present and future generations. Part of this learning process includes translating diverse environmental values and worldviews into concrete design requirements or guidelines for research and innovation.
Your Instructors
- Alexandria K. Poole (Philososophy)
- Dominic Lenzi (Philosophy)
- Michel Bourban (Philosophy)
- Margoth Gonzalez-Woge (Philosophy)
- Corelia Baibarac-Duignan (KITES)
- Steven McGreevy (CSTM)
- Esther Turnhout (KITES)
- Kate Sammler (KITES)
- Sandra Calkins (KITES)
- Andreas Weber (KITES)
- Leonardo van den Berg (KITES)
Minor Coordinators:
- Alexandria K. Poole (Philosophy)
- Dominic Lenzi (Philosophy)
- Michel Bourban (Philosophy)
