Collaborating with academic colleagues On hopeful, solutions-focused Teaching, research and Engagement

Solutions-Focused Environmental Studies

Elin is working with the University of Victoria, Canada on a major rethink of curriculum in the School of Environmental Studies designed to bring students to a solutions-oriented practice that moves past the depressive analytics that occupy much of environmental learning. Look through the School of Environmental Studies course offerings to find solutions-focused courses offered by Elin in 2021.

Radical Hope Syllabus

Take a look at what this group of international scholars feel is important to teach and learn about radical hope. Explore the resources Elin shared about the rise of optimism in the conservation movement.

Hopeful Environmental Lifestyle Trends Research

Working with Dr. Nicole Ardoin and the students in her Social Ecology lab at Stanford University is always meaningful. As a Visiting Scholar, Elin led the identification of hopeful environmental lifestyles trends and tailored hope-based engagement strategies (in collaboration with Stanford’s d-school) to encourage whale watchers on Oceanic Society trips and visitors to Redwoods to take environmental action.

Propagating Collective Hope in the Midst of Environmental Doom and Gloom

Environmental educators recognize the importance of empowering children and adults, yet environmental education operates within a grand narrative of environmental gloom and doom. Growing evidence exists that children feel hopeless about the future of the planet. Given relationships between hope and agency, the question arises of how to propagate hope when environmental educators themselves are inundated by doom and gloom. In this paper, Elin draws insights from the research literature on palliative care, where questions of hope and hopelessness are more openly debated. It recognizes the value of alternative conceptions of hope and the capacity for emotions to be shared via hopeful social media campaigns, such as #OceanOptimism.

Wild Contagious Hope

Elin is a faculty member in the Red Fish School of Change and teaches in their Field School. In response to COVID-19 she co-created an online Ecology and Hope course for students at Western Washington University and the University of Victoria.

In 2019, Elin worked with Red Fish School of Change, Western Washington University and the Salish Sea Institute to lead a two day campus-wide workshop and public event on hope and environmental solutions.

EE Webinar-Series

Elin engages formal and informal environmental educators across North America with innovative ways to spread hope.

The Road To Sustainable Happiness

In this lead article, Elin partners with Dr. Catherine O’Brien to ;resent a compelling case for why a focus on the emerging field of Sustainable Happiness provides an antidote to environmental doom and gloom.