Dr Rowan Gard

Dr Rowan Gard is an environmental social scientist with research experience in environmental degradation and climate change resilience, as well as the environmental and societal impacts of economic globalisation.

She has a long standing interest in human-environmental interaction with an early academic interest in paleoecology. She now works with communities on the front lines of climate change in Oceania and the UK, and is the Environmental Sciences Editor for the International Social Sciences Journal (ISSJ) with Wiley Publishing, originally founded in 1949 by UNESCO. She is a former postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College London and has taught at the Universities of Edinburgh, Hawaiʻi, and St Andrews. She is a Fellow with the Royal Anthropology Institute, the Royal Geographical Society and the Higher Education Academy; and an active member of the Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education with the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EUAC).

Previously she has held management positions at the Bishop Museum—the Hawaiʻi State Museum of Cultural and Natural History—in Honolulu and at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. More recently she has co-founded and now serves as a Trustee for Young Sea Changers Scotland (YSCS), an emerging charity (SC052142) and sea action network dedicated to marine conservation and amplifying the voices of youth in marine policy making and implementation. She is also a former Trustee with Friends of the Earth Scotland and has been proud to represent Scotland on multiple occasions at the People’s Climate Summit that annually coincides with the UN’s Conference of the Parties (COP).

Qualifications

• Postgraduate Certificate in Philosophical Studies, Pacific Theology College (2024)
• PhD in Environmental Anthropology, University of St Andrews (2019)
• Master of Anthropology (Paleoecology), summa cum laude, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (2010)
• BA in Anthropology (Archaeology), magna cum laude, University of California at Davis (2006)

Research

• Climate change and environmental degradation responses, especially in Oceania and the UK
• Education for sustainability
• Deep sea mining and the blue economy in the Pacific
• Climate change activism and environmental campaigning
• Globalization in and of Oceania
• Art as climate change response
• Traditional knowledge and spiritual understandings of nature
• The green economy and greenwashing practices
• Informal education in public spaces, especially museum
• Decolonization in higher education and museums

Rowan's interdisciplinary research explores aspects of economic globalisation, climate change and environmental justice, whilst also drawing on understandings of ethics, communal responsibility and morality. She is especially interested in place-based climate change responses that also engage with the arts and spiritual understandings of the natural world.

In totality, she has more than eighteen years of community engagement and teaching experience in formal and informal educational settings, as well as contributing to permanent and traveling exhibitions in museum and science centre settings. As a result of these diverse experiences she is interested in both praxis and theoretical understandings of grassroots activism and environmental campaigning, nature and sustainability-focused education, and creating a consilience between science and spirituality in climate change response.

Teaching

• 4SSG1016 Geography in Action
• 4SSG1008 Geography Tutorials: Critical Thinking and Techniques
• 5ABLLIB2 Space, Power, Agency
• 6SSG0610 Independent Geographical Study
• 6SSG3088/7SSGN224 Sustainability in Practice
• 7SSGN002/7SSG5002 Practicing Social Research
• 7SSGN070 Internship (Environment and Society)
• 4SSG1008 Geography Tutorials: Critical Thinking and Techniques

PhD Students

Rowan would be happy to supervise PhD students in any of the following areas:

• artistic and spiritual understandings of climate change
• nature-focused education
• sustainability-influenced behaviour modification, and education for sustainability more generally
• the politics and economics of climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction
• Climate change activism, and the environmental movement more broadly

Selected Examples of Publications

Gard, Rowan et al. (2023). Education for Sustainable Development Report: A Review of the Literature 2015-2022. Advanced Higher Education.

Gard, Rowan et al. (2023). A New Team and Vision of the International Social Science Journal. Editorial in International Social Science Journal. Volume 73: 255-259.

Gard, Rowan (2021). Paddling on Both Sides of the Canoe—Towards an Integration of Science and Spirituality in Climate Change Response [chapter in] Opportunities for Faith-Engaged Approaches to Climate Change Adaptation in the Pacific Islands. (Ed) Nunn, P. Springer Publishing, as part of the Climate Change Management Series.

Gard, Rowan (2018). How $6 trillion of fossil fuel investments got dumped thanks to green campaigners: the Environment & Energy section of The Conversation, republished by Resilience.org and Yahoo News UK.

Gard, Rowan (2018). Welcome to the Age of Sustainable Development? Anthropology Today. Volume 34 (1), 18-19.

Gard, Rowan (2017). Looking for Light on the Dark Side of the American Dream—Exploring the Painful Legacy of Nuclear Colonialism in Paradise: International Journal of Research in Anthropology and Sociology. Volume 3 (4), 32-42.

Gard, Rowan & Veitayaki, Joeli. (2017). In the Wake of Winston—Climate Change, Mobility and Resiliency in Fiji: Disaster Management, 57-68, Ed. C. Brebbia, Wessex Institute Press, Southampton, UK.

Gard, Rowan & Veitayaki, Joeli. (2017). In the Wake of Winston—Climate Change, Mobility and Resiliency in Fiji: International Journal of Safety& Security Engineering. Volume 7 (2), 157-168.

Selected Examples of Exhibitions

• Time for Actions, Not Words at the Great Hall, King’s College London (2023)
• CASCADE INQUIRY with Superflux at The Exchange, King’s College London (2023)
• Weathervane: We, Not I at the Great Hall, King’s College London (2022)
• Reimaging Museums for Climate Action at the Glasgow Science Centre (2021)
• Moana—The Rising of the Sea at the Wardlaw Museum & Byre Theatre, University of St Andrews (2015) Shortlisted for the Times Higher Education’s Excellence and Innovation in the Arts Award
• Hearst Museum Revitalization Project at the University of California, Berkeley (2013-2014)
• Beauty & Belief: Crossing Bridges with the Arts of Islamic Culture with the Doris Duke Foundation (2012)
• Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape and Islamic Art with the Doris Duke Foundation (2012)
• Pacific Hall Restoration Project at Bishop Museum (2010-2011)
• Voyages of Discovery – The Pacific and its People at Bishop Museum’s Planetarium (2010)

Further details

See Rowan's research profile