Sustainability Education: Fairness and Flourishing
Green Templeton Lectures 2025
Wednesday 12 February 2025 17:30 to 18:45Speakers: |
Chukwumerije Okereke, Professor in Global Governance and Public Policy, University of Bristol Amanda Power, Sullivan Clarendon Associate Professor in History, University of Oxford |
About
There is growing awareness of the importance of addressing the interwoven crises of climate change, inequality and biodiversity loss. Education, as always, is seen as a critical component in addressing these challenges. These lectures will explore the topic of sustainability education with speakers reflecting, in dialogue, on three critical and central issues.
In the first session, Chukwumerije Okereke, Professor in Global Governance and Public Policy at the University of Bristol, and Dr Amanda Power from the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford, will bring their experience as academics into reflections on how educators engage with questions of fairness and flourishing.
Professor Chukwumerije Okereke is Professor of Global Climate Governance and Public Policy at the School of Policy Studies at the University of Bristol with specialism on global climate justice and green growth transition. He is a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Co-Director of the Center for Climate Change in Alex Ekuweme Federal University, Nigeria. He was formerly Co-Director of the Center for Climate and Justice and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme both at the University of Reading. He was also previously Director of the Center for Climate Change and Development at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford during which he was a Fellow at Green Templeton College (GTC). Prof Okereke was a Senior Academic Visitor at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, from 2011 to 2023. A globally recognized leading scholar on global climate governance and international development, Prof Okereke was a Lead Author on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5 and a Coordinating Lead Author on the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group 3.
Dr Amanda Power is an historian of religion, power and intellectual life in medieval Europe. She has been involved in developing the field of global medieval history, and new approaches to historical study that speak to the concerns of the mounting climate and environmental crisis. She is currently working on a monograph, Medieval Histories of the Anthropocene, which explores questions concerning the relations between religion, power and the construction of public rationality in the building of medieval states across Eurasia. She is interested in how these centralising processes consciously dislocated humans from local ecosystems and specific and sustainable practices, while creating powerful and enduring narratives about civilisation, barbarism, and the use of resources. A related, partly collaborative, series of projects ask about the purposes and the future of our discipline, and of Humanities and Social Sciences more generally, in the politically, economically and ecologically unstable period that we are now entering
Read Amanda Power and Alison Kitson’s article in the History Education Research Journal (2024), ‘The role of school history in helping young people to navigate their future at a time of climate crisis’
The 2025 annual flagship Green Templeton Lectures series is convened by James Robson and Mark Hirons. It will explore critical issues in the future of sustainability education.
If you have any questions about this event, please email liz.green@gtc.ox.ac.uk
To request a livestream link for the event, please email academic.projects@gtc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that the quality of the livestream will be limited as this is primarily designed as an in-person event.
