Geographies of Environmental Knowledge

Research in this cluster examines the formation of knowledge of the environment in historically, politically, economically, and culturally specific contexts, and scrutinizes its local and global effects. Such knowledge includes scientific, lay, indigenous or traditional, speculative, and other forms of claims to sense and represent the environment.

Our research addresses a range of questions: How is environmental knowledge generated, framed, communicated, and contested? How do power relations shape environmental knowledge, bringing to the fore some forms while marginalising or obliterating others? When and how is environmental knowledge formalised into a discipline and becomes a science? How does environmental knowledge emerge in relation to specific landscapes and places?

Our research examines the geographies of environmental knowledge related to glaciological and geological studies, field sciences, civic epistemologies, indigenous knowledge, and speculative literature. We employ a range of empirical and analytical methodologies, including archival research, interviews, visual methods, participant observation, and literary analysis. Our research is both empirical and theoretical, as we aim to develop a conceptual framework that allows us to capture the formation of environmental knowledge and offers pathways for more inclusive knowledge production and for transforming contemporary ideas of expertise on the environment.

Our Team Members in Geographies of Environmental Knowledge