Our species is facing accelerating environmental challenges, from unmitigated climate change to biodiversity loss, with consequences for human well-being. While research on these topics has traditionally emerged from siloed disciplines, there is a growing recognition that the solutions to these intersecting crises will require cross-disciplinary and multi-level perspectives that span individuals, collectives, institutions and other structural factors. This graduate-level course will expose students to theories, empirical findings and methodologies from across the behavioral social sciences that are used to study human-nature relations, including the impact of environmental change on human psychology, societies and institutions, and the role of these factors in reinforcing unsustainable pathways and in achieving more sustainable futures. This integrative perspective can provide insight into how our understanding of the environment depends on the social and cultural contexts in which we are situated, how changes in human behaviors impact the broader systems in which they are embedded, how changes in the environment shape human behavior and perceptions, and how political and institutional measures can account for these factors to promote sustainability. This is the second course in the core sequence for the Environmental Behavioral Sciences track of the Environmental Social Sciences PhD program. Instructor permission required for non-Environmental Social Sciences PhD students.
3 units · Letter (ABCD/NP)
Our species is facing accelerating environmental challenges, from unmitigated climate change to biodiversity loss, with consequences for human well-being. While research on these topics has traditionally emerged from siloed disciplines, there is a growing recognition that the solutions to these intersecting crises will require cross-disciplinary and multi-level perspectives that span individuals, collectives, institutions and other structural factors. This graduate-level course will expose students to theories, empirical findings and methodologies from across the behavioral social sciences that are used to study human-nature relations, including the impact of environmental change on human psychology, societies and institutions, and the role of these factors in reinforcing unsustainable pathways and in achieving more sustainable futures. This integrative perspective can provide insight into how our understanding of the environment depends on the social and cultural contexts in which we are situated, how changes in human behaviors impact the broader systems in which they are embedded, how changes in the environment shape human behavior and perceptions, and how political and institutional measures can account for these factors to promote sustainability. This is the second course in the core sequence for the Environmental Behavioral Sciences track of the Environmental Social Sciences PhD program. Instructor permission required for non-Environmental Social Sciences PhD students.
Offered in Winter 2027 at Stanford University.