My teaching focuses on how people mobilise "spirit" (myth, ritual, magic, tradition and play), culture, and drama (picking actors, curating events) to influence social, political and ecological change. 

My Cultures of Sustainability in Global Perspective draws on my original research. The course is in its second year and is open to all Masters students.

I also co-teach on Jeroen Oomen's Futuring for Sustainability on the BSc Global Sustainability Science and Maarten Hajer's interdisciplinary honours course How to Change the World. 

Cultures of Sustainability in Global Perspective 
 
As academics, activists, and policymakers alike explore how to trigger transitions towards sustainability, culture is increasingly seen as a central factor. Appreciating the complex relationship between culture and sustainability is a crucial prerequisite for all students of sustainability whatever their disciplinary and regional interest. For some, it will provide a useful background to a materialist or policy-oriented approach. For others, it will serve as the basis of their future studies. 
 
Because sustainability is cultural, interpretations of what sustainability is and should be vary across the globe. This, in turn, has consequences for sustainability policy, technological development, and politics. Taking students through ethnographic studies of a range of cultures in, before, outside of, and “in the future of” the West (from the laboratories at CERN on the Franco-Swiss border, to indigenous water protectors in the Pacific Northwest of North America, policy makers in Cape Town, and climate protestors in The Netherlands), this course explores the complex ways in which culture and sustainability interact in different settings and regions. Scholars and activists who take culture seriously show a degree of agreement on both the problem and the solution, despite coming from a range of contexts and disciplinary backgrounds. In their view, Western, modern, Christian, naturalistic, and capitalist cultures are the problem, while non-Western, pre-modern, non-Christian, animistic, and collectivist cultures are the solution. Unfortunately, the reality on the ground may be far messier than this. In this course, we will explore that messy reality, showing the cultural complexity of sustainability imaginaries practices.