2026/7 – ENV-5054A People, Place and the Environment

Autumn Semester, Level 5 module, Credits: UCU 20

Organiser: Dr Casper Ebbensgaard

Assessment Type: Coursework

Timetable Slot: C

This module explores the interconnected geographies that physically and socially tie together Norfolk and the Netherlands, in the past and in the future, through a fieldtrips at home and overseas. The two regions share distinct similarities in terms of their geography and by facing similar future challenges, the module provides an opportunity for cross-regional learning in terms of contrasting approaches to particular issues in different places. From draining systems to experiments in social and communal housing, and from the legacies of colonialism and the maritime industries to flood defence technologies, the module introduces students to live case studies that mirror each other across the two regions in their shared commitment to ‘securitise’ or ’improve’ the future of the environment and its inhabitants. The module centres the sea, rivers and waterways not as boundaries that demarcate geographies but, rather, as the connective tissue that materially and historically tie the regions together and which intellectually provide an anchor through which students can make analytical observations and comparative links. The module offers a unique pedagogical opportunity to develop a nuanced understanding of what geographical research does in practice (how geographical knowledge is mobilised in practice to alter environmental futures) in preparing people and environments for the future, through the simultaneous reading of two interconnected places. By introducing students to competing and complimentary ways of thinking about scale through key ideas in human geography—including political ecology, urban geography, nature and culture and environmental history—students will develop nuanced understanding of the global relations that shape people, place and environments in interdependent and interconnected ways.