Education is essential for sustainable futures - and it is thus a priority at CEH.
While there are no official environmental humanities degrees currently being offered at AU, students can learn about the environmental humanities through a number of courses offered at BA and MA levels, as well as through active participation at the CEH. Below, you can read about a variety of courses taught by CEH affiliated researchers. There are also many other courses at AU that may be of interest to those seeking to learn more about the environmental humanities. While not a part of CEH, two masters programmes—Human Security and Sustainable Heritage Management—could be of interest to those seeking masters degree programs with environmental humanities elements embedded in their course work. In addition, we offer summer courses for visiting students.
If you are an instructor at AU and you would like to be in dialogue about bringing environmental humanities approaches into your course teaching, we would be very interested in talking with you—please reach out to us at ceh@cas.au.dk.
CEH's courses seek to foster the core compentencies for sustainability that have been identified by UNESCO:
Systems thinking competency: the abilities to recognize and understand relationships; to analyse complex systems; to think of how systems are embedded within different domains and different scales; and to deal with uncertainty.
Anticipatory competency: the abilities to understand and evaluate multiple futures – possible, probable and desirable; to create one’s own visions for the future; to apply the precautionary principle; to assess the consequences of actions; and to deal with risks and changes.
Normative competency: the abilities to understand and reflect on the norms and values that underlie one’s actions; and to negotiate sustainability values, principles, goals, and targets, in a context of conflicts of interests and trade-offs, uncertain knowledge and contradictions.
Strategic competency: the abilities to collectively develop and implement innovative actions that further sustainability at the local level and further afield.
Collaboration competency: the abilities to learn from others; to understand and respect the needs, perspectives and actions of others (empathy); to understand, relate to and be sensitive to others (empathic leadership); to deal with conflicts in a group; and to facilitate collaborative and participatory problem solving.
Critical thinking competency: the ability to question norms, practices and opinions; to reflect on own one’s values, perceptions and actions; and to take a position in the sustainability discourse.
Self-awareness competency: the ability to reflect on one’s own role in the local community and (global) society; to continually evaluate and further motivate one’s actions; and to deal with one’s feelings and desires.
Integrated problem-solving competency: the overarching ability to apply different problem-solving frameworks
to complex sustainability problems and develop viable, inclusive and equitable solution options that promote sustainable development, integrating the above- mentioned competences.
From “Education for Sustainable Development: Learning Objectives,” UNESCO report (2017).
