Dr Rowan Gard (she/her) is an environmental social scientist whose work explores the intersections of climate change, sustainability, culture and multispecies justice across the North and South Seas. Her research and teaching draw together environmental justice, posthuman ethics, decolonial praxis and Oceanian epistemologies, with a particular interest in how culture, temporality and alternative solidarities might reframe questions of justice beyond the human.

Rowan holds a PhD in Environmental Anthropology from the University of St Andrews. She has also held posts at University College London, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Hawaiʻi, and previously held leadership roles at the Bishop Museum — the Hawaiʻi State Museum of Cultural and Natural History — in Honolulu and the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Rowan is passionate about teaching the next generation of sustainability leaders and received a 2026 King’s Teaching Award in the “Silver Lining” category for outstanding pastoral care and support. Beyond academia, Rowan co-founded Young Sea Changers Scotland, a youth-led marine conservation charity, and has served as a Trustee of Friends of the Earth Scotland.

Research

• Culture, place and environmental change
• Deep-sea mining and ocean governance
• Climate activism and environmental politics
• Oceanian epistemologies and decolonial praxis
• Spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of the environmental crisis
• Education for sustainability
• The green economy, just transition and greenwashing practices
• Informal education in public spaces, especially museums

Rowan’s early career work in paleoecology helped shape an enduring interest in how ecological relationships are understood through culture, place and temporality. Her recent and ongoing work focuses particularly on the emerging politics of deep-sea mining, examining extraction, ecological risk, ocean governance and multispecies justice. Drawing on human geography, posthuman ethics and decolonial thought, she is particularly interested in Pasifika epistemologies and in how alternative solidarities might challenge dominant human–environment relations and open possibilities for imagining justice beyond the human.

Alongside this work, Rowan is developing interdisciplinary research around environmental memory, cultural narratives and the ways in which societies understand and respond to environmental crisis. She is particularly interested in the aesthetic and spiritual dimensions of climate change, and in how art, myth, and memory shape environmental relationships and imaginaries of possible futures. Current collaborations explore climate change through myth and classical traditions, as well as the cultural and environmental histories of the Green Man and changing relationships with the more-than-human world.

Rowan’s research also examines climate and environmental activism, including the ways in which environmental movements create new forms of political participation, solidarity and environmental citizenship. She is particularly interested in how activism both challenges dominant environmental narratives and creates alternative ways of imagining and enacting futures.

A further strand of Rowan’s work focuses on Education for Sustainability and the relationship between sustainability knowledge and practice. She is particularly interested in the potential for education to move beyond learning about sustainability towards developing the capacity to participate in and create lasting environmental change.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• 4SSG1016 Geography in Action
• 4SSG1008 Geography Tutorials: Critical Thinking and Techniques
• 5ABLLIB2 Space, Power, Agency
• 6SSG0610 Independent Geographical Study
• 6SSG3088 Sustainability in Practice

Postgraduate

• 7SSGN224 Sustainability in Practice
• 7SSGN002/7SSG5002 Practicing Social Research
• 7SSGN070 Internship (Environment and Society)

PhD supervision

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 publications

Gard, Rowan & Murphy, James (2025). The Deep-Sea Mining Frontier: Blue Economy Agenda in the Pacific Ocean. Academia Journal of Environmental Sciences and Sustainability.

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

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). 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.

Selected exhibitions & media 

• Sacrificing the Ocean to Save the Planet, The World in Question Podcast (2026)
• Cassandra and the Agency of Hope, London and Verona (2025)
• Vital Signs: Another World is Possible at the Science Gallery, London (2024)
• 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

Further details

See Rowan's research profile