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 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 Research Fellow at University College London and has taught at the Universities of Edinburgh, Hawaiʻi, and St Andrews.

Previously she has held management positions at the Bishop Museum - the Hawaiʻi State Museum of Cultural and Natural History - in Honolulu and 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 Trustee with Friends of the Earth Scotland and when not working she adores beachcombing, wild swimming and coffee with friends.

Research

• Climate change and environmental degradation responses - especially in Oceania and the UK
• Deep sea mining and the green economy
• Activism and environmental campaigning
• Globalization in and of Oceania
• Traditional knowledge and spiritual understandings of nature
• Informal education in public spaces, especially museums
• 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 fifteen years of community engagement and teaching experience in formal and informal educational settings, as well as contributing to permanent and traveling exhibitions in museum settings. As a result she is interested in both praxis and theoretical understandings of grassroots activism and environmental campaigning, environmental 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 (PSR)

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

• artistic and spiritual understandings of climate change
• environmental education and sustainability-influenced behaviour modification
• the politics and/or economics of climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction
• activism and the environmental movement

Further details

See Rowan's research profile