Department of Geography, Cambridge » Environmental knowledges

Our work in this sub-theme examines the politics of environmental knowledges, with particular thematic foci on climate change, biodiversity and volcanic risks. We study how diverse expertise – for example, lay, scientific, western, non-western – is mobilised in global environmental assessments, environmental controversies, risk management protocols and advisory processes. This sub-theme lies at the interface between the human and physical geographies of environmental risk.

Research projects

Research projects currently being undertaken on this theme include:

	Arctic Environmental Humanities As the Arctic gains greater visibility among academics and diverse publics, we see an urgent need for humanities scholars to help shape the current debates and research priorities too often limited to the natural and social sciences. This rise in awareness of Arctic issues coincides with widespread academic initiatives in the emerging interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities. These growing interests in the Arctic and in the environmental humanities are in turn both catalyzed by the climate crisis; the urgency of this crisis is central to, but not exhaustive of, our collective commitment to Arctic environmental humanities (AEH).
	ERC IMAGINE: Geographical Imaginations and the (geo)politics of volcanic risk: cultures, knowledges, actions 2019-2024 This project investigates the intertwined human and environmental geographies of borderland volcanic areas in Latin America and East Africa. It combines human geographical theories of the earth with approaches from science and technology studies to think about volcanic places and spaces undergoing rapid environmental change, and seeks to integrate new theoretical ideas with disaster risk reduction in developing contexts.
	Making climate history Two centuries after the emergence of steam technologies and 170 years after initial suggestions that the atmosphere keeps Earth warm, scientists proved human disturbance of the Earth’s carbon budget changes the world’s climate. The work and timescales of making and knowing are decisively interrelated, yet still too little is understood about critical links between how imperial and global energy infrastructures have re-made climate and how scientists have known climate. This project uses historical, oral and material methods to analyse the relation between making climates and knowing them. Its guiding principle is that the conceptual and technical work required to create effective knowledge of changing climates is strongly connected to the material technologies and practices that produce and change physical climate regimes.
	WIREs Climate Change Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change is a leading international journal that offers a unique platform for reviewing the diverse knowledge that emerges from the many disciplines that contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon: environmental history, the humanities, physical and life sciences, social sciences, engineering and economics. The journal acts as a forum for exposing and understanding the many reasons why climate change remains a powerful lens through which to approach many of the great challenges facing the world today.
	Mount Paektu Research Centre This project has been running in earnest since 2013 and involves many partners in the DPR Korea, PR China, the UK and USA. It is focused on understanding the origins, deep structure, past eruptions, and hazards of Mount Paektu (aka Changbaishan or Tianchi volcano), which is situated on the international border between DPR Korea and the PR China.