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'Climate and Sustainability for the Future' summer school

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Venue: Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street

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Birkbeck’s ‘Climate and Sustainability for the Future’ summer school offers an engaging and accessible introduction to climate change and sustainability, for anyone interested in extending their environmental education. If you are thinking of enrolling on one of our environment postgraduate programmes, you will find it excellent preparation for studying with us and a fantastic opportunity to get to know the Birkbeck campus, our staff and other students.

Across two days (22-23 June) you will encounter new concepts and knowledge through interactive lectures, before putting new learning into practice in a creative climate communication group project. You will have the opportunity to showcase these outputs on the Summer School website and Birkbeck blog. Some of these tasks are similar to assignments that Birkbeck students are asked to produce, giving you a window into what it is like to study with us.  
 
Facilitated by Birkbeck’s Academic Co-Directors of Environmental Education (Dr Aideen Foley, Dr Dale Mineshima-Lowe and Dr Steve Willey), and with workshops led by academics from across Birkbeck’s three faculties, as well as the Birkbeck Law School and Business School, the summer school highlights the interdisciplinarity of the climate change challenge, and the role we all have to play in addressing it. 
 
All attendees will receive a certificate of participation.

If you progress to enrolling on a postgraduate programme with us within one year (e.g., by Autumn 2025) the cost of participating in the Summer School can be redeemed against your programme fees.

Lunch (vegetarian and vegan selection of sandwiches), as well as coffee/tea will be provided on both days of the summer school. If you have any food allergies or dietary restrictions, please let the team know by contacting us at the email below.


Deadline extended: Registration closes at midnight on Tuesday, 18th June.

If you have questions about the summer school, please contact the Environmental Education Team at: Env-Ed@bbk.ac.uk. 

Planned Weekend Schedule  
  
Day 1 [22 June 2024] 
10am-12pm: Why is our climate changing? Introduction to climate science (with Dr Phil Hopley, School of Natural Sciences) 
12-1pm: Lunch break 
1-3pm: Sustainable development in international environmental law and policymaking (with Dr Olivia Hamlyn, Birkbeck Law School) 
3-3:30pm: Break  
3:30-5:30pm: No more ‘business as usual’? Sustainable business practice (Prof. Muthu de Silva, Birkbeck Business School) 
5:30-6pm: Debrief and prep for Day 2 
 
Day 2 [23 June 2024] 
10am-12pm: Creative climate communication: Policy brief, blog, op-ed (led by colleagues from across the College) 
12pm-1:00pm: Lunch break  
1:00pm-2.00pm: Workshop: Prepare your own policy brief, blog, or op-ed 
3:00pm-3:30pm: Close   

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Bios of colleagues contributing to this event, can be found below:

Dr Chao-yo Cheng is a Lecturer in Quantitative Political and Social Research. He is also the Director of Birkbeck's Postgraduate Social Research Programmes. His work applies various computational, quantitative and qualitative methods to address a wide range of topics in the political economy of development and institutions. Before coming to Birkbeck, Chao-Yo held fellowship positions at Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Between 2014 and 2015, he took part in a cross-national research team to launch a large-scale rural household survey of energy poverty in rural India. This project was funded by ClimateWorks and led to two peer-reviewed article (Nature Energy 2016 and Energy Policy 2018) and a joint policy report between Columbia University and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (Delhi, India).

Prof. Muthu de Silvais a Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Head of Research, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange, at the Faculty of Business and Law, Birkbeck, University of London, UK. Her research contributes to our knowledge on co-creation, defined as how different actors of the ecosystem - such as businesses, universities, society and government - work together to simultaneously generate business, social and environmental value. She has published in world-leading (ABS 4*/3*) journals such as  Research Policy, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, British Journal of Management, Technovation, and R&D Management etc.

Dr Aideen Foley is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Geography, teaching modules on climate science, environmental policy, and the social dimensions of climate change. She has served as Programme Director for the MSc Environment and Sustainability and MSc Climate Change. She is a recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (2022), and a Fellow of Bard College’s Centre for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy (2022-2024). With a BSc in Applied Mathematics and Experimental Physics and a PhD in Geography focusing on climate model evaluation, Aideen’s research draws on both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her research focuses on climate and environmental hazards and change at regional and local scales, particularly in small island communities.

Dr Olivia Hamlyn is a lecturer at Birkbeck where she teaches and researches environmental law and law and technology. She has conducted research for the European Parliamentary Research Service and acted as a consultant for the Green Group in the European Parliament on matters relating to EU pesticides regulation. Prior to joining Birkbeck, she completed a training contract at Clifford Chance LLP, completed a PhD at UCL and was a lecturer at the University of Leicester.

Dr Phil Hopley is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Natural Sciences. He uses stable isotope geochemistry in cave carbonates (speleothems) and fossil teeth to understand Pliocene and Pleistocene climate and environments. Much of this work offers context to human evolution in Africa.

Dr Dale Mineshima-Lowe is an Associate Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences teaching modules in both politics and environmental geography at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including teaching the module on climate change and environmental hazards and serving as an examiner for the MSc Global Environment and Sustainability distance learning programme run as a Birkbeck-University of London course. She is Managing Editor for the Center of International Relations, a thinktank based in Washington D.C., an OSUN-CLASP Fellow (2021- 2023), and visiting faculty at Parami University (USA/Myanmar) and Bard College (NY, USA).

Dr Steve Willey is an internationally published poet and critic with poetry translated into German and Arabic. He has served as the Programme Director of BA Creative Writing and English, MA Creative and Critical Writing, and MA Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. In these roles he designed and implemented 'Writing the Planet', a trans-historical, cross-disciplinary, MA module that works at the intersection of ecology and literature. He is researching connections between acts of local and creative solidarity and ecological grief in the London Borough of Newham.

 

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