Environment and Empire

Overview

Academic Lead: Jeremy Schmidt

Syllabus: SUM503F Environment and Empire

This module examines how environmental challenges have been, and continue to be, shaped by empire. These impacts affect how Earth's history, the biosphere, and the climate are known, and extend to both extractive technologies and financial relationships that enable extraction. But the effects of empire run deeper, to the very way the environment is understood. Using London as a launchpad for field trips and firsthand encounters, this module challenges students to rethink how ideas of the planet’s past, present, and future are shaped by empire.

Course content is subject to change.

Course aims

This module aims to:

• examine how empire has shaped, and continues to shape, environmental knowledge.
• explore sites and spaces of empire, such as where the material markers of scientific knowledge persist in advancing ways of knowing and relating to the environment today.
• understand how contemporary modes of extraction maintain links to the legacies of empire, such as in and through financial activities.
• provide students with concrete analytical skills for situating contemporary challenges in historical context.
• encourage students to engage critically and thoughtfully with how environmental thought, and baselines for assessing environmental impacts, have been influenced by the data collected through empire.

Teaching and learning

You will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminars, and field trips. 

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module:

• students will be able to explain the historical and geographical context of empire in which knowledge of the 'environment' took shape
• students will be able to critically analyse how alternate practices of knowledge production have been mobilized to contest scientific and normative claims of empire regarding the environment
• students will be able to interpret sites where environmental knowledge designed to advance empire persist (e.g. landscapes or monuments) and to explain their significance

You will be able to:

• explain the historical and geographical context of empire in which knowledge of the 'environment' took shape
• critically analyse how alternate practices of knowledge production have been mobilized to contest scientific and normative claims of empire regarding the environment
• to demonstrate their expertise in understanding how historical and cultural  contexts affect the production of environmental knowledge
• to explain the importance of taking a global perspective on environmental knowledge 

Fees

Additional costs

All reading material will be provided online, so it is not necessary to purchase any books.

You will be required to pay your travel costs to and from any field trips.

For course and housing fees visit our finance webpage

Entry requirements

How to apply

Have a question? Get in touch - one of the team will be happy to help!

Applications close 26 May 2025