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Key research themes
1. How can imagination and empathy enhance ecological awareness and education for sustainability?
This research theme explores the role of imagination as a cognitive and affective process that enables individuals to understand and empathize with non-human nature and complex ecological systems. It examines how imaginative acts, including imaginative exercises, embodied imagination, and empathetic understanding, contribute to a deeper engagement with sustainability challenges and the cultivation of pro-environmental values and behaviors. This theme is central to advancing pedagogy and environmental education that transcends dualistic thinking and fosters a holistic ecological consciousness.
Key finding: Williams presents an exercise guiding participants through imaginal encounters with ancestral figures to access ecological wisdom embedded in the collective unconscious, linking immersive imagination with ecological... Read more
Key finding: The study identifies empathy as an imaginative act that fosters deep environmental understanding by enabling learners to transcend self-other dualisms inherent in conventional environmental education. It empirically... Read more
Key finding: This thesis reconceptualizes imagination as a legitimate epistemological pathway in environmental education, emphasizing its material consequences and centrality in shaping a non-anthropocentric worldview. It highlights that... Read more
Key finding: The paper elucidates Merleau-Ponty’s concept of embodied imagination, arguing it underpins experiential engagement in immersive virtual reality environments that simulate ecological presence. By bridging phenomenology and... Read more
2. What conceptual frameworks best articulate human-nature relationships in ecological and sustainability discourse?
This theme investigates interdisciplinary conceptualizations of the human-nature interface, focusing on systemic, ecological, and value-based frameworks that inform both scholarly understanding and practical approaches to sustainability and environmental management. It addresses cognitive paradigms like systems thinking, landscape as a lived-cultural construct, ecological values diversity, and the integration of traditional knowledge, placing conceptual innovation at the center of responding to complex environmental crises.
Key finding: Empirical analysis shows that individuals with high systems thinking ability exhibit stronger ecological worldviews, biospheric values, and pro-environmental behaviors, validating systems thinking as a cognitive paradigm that... Read more
Key finding: This work articulates an integrative landscape approach that transcends disciplinary silos by framing landscapes as relational interfaces encompassing physical, cultural, and cognitive dimensions. It advocates inter- and... Read more
Key finding: Through synthesis of over 50,000 sources, the study develops a multilayered typology of nature's values—encompassing worldviews, broad values, specific values, and value indicators—and demonstrates that policy and... Read more
Key finding: The paper identifies a critical nuance that traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is sometimes preserved not from ecological or cultural preference but due to poverty and lack of alternatives. This challenges simplistic... Read more
3. How do ecological art and imaginative media shape ecological imagination and public engagement with environmental futures?
This research direction explores the role of contemporary ecological art and immersive media technologies in materializing ecological imagination, provoking alternative ecological sensibilities, and producing tangible environmental interventions. It examines how art practices and speculative fiction envision, critique, and facilitate new socio-ecological relationships and imaginaries vital for engaging public and political spheres in sustainability transitions.
Key finding: The article delineates ecological art as uniquely engaging with the physical environment through acts of appropriation, regeneration, and coexistence, going beyond representation to generating tangible ecological effects. It... Read more
Key finding: The paper argues for expanding the role of humanities in ecological management by cultivating new sensitivities and aesthetics through speculative science fiction. It positions the fantastic genre, especially eco-centric... Read more
Key finding: This study investigates how immersive nonfiction media leverage presence, embodiment, and multilayered environments to subvert human/nature binaries, fostering ecological entanglement narratives. It critiques prevalent... Read more