Course summary

The Earth is facing up to unprecedented environmental challenges. Enormous problems ranging from biodiversity loss to climate change demand both critical thought and action in order to understand and live with a changing planet. Yet environmental issues are simultaneously political, technological and cultural, and produce profound inequalities in how wealth, power and justice are realised. This unique Masters programme in Political Ecology offers the conceptual tools and practical skills to ask the difficult questions of human-environment relations, to not accept the status quo uncritically, and to drive transformative action. By taking the MA Political Ecology at Lancaster, the only such programme in the UK, you will be working with and learning from one of the largest political ecology research groups in the country. We draw upon political ecology’s multi-dimensionality and emphasise a generous range of interdisciplinary perspectives that seek to understand different ways of analysing the critique, debates and actions centred on diverse environment and development concerns from local to global scales. We focus on a range of themes including the politics of resource extraction, water, climate politics and the green economy. To do this, we believe passionately that learning isn’t just about lectures. We offer novel approaches to our teaching, engaging our students in creative classes that provide the necessary means to understand a complex planet and the challenges of our living with it.