Christ Church co-hosts the South East Outdoor Learning Research Hub with The Bay Trust. The Hub, supported by the Institute for Outdoor Learning, aims to integrate research and practice at a local level and is aimed at researchers, practitioners and those with an interest in outdoor learning.

Open access publications include:

• Kemp, N & Josephidou, J. (2021) Babies and toddlers outdoors: a narrative review of the literature on provision for under twos in ECEC settings. Early Years: An International? Research Journal
• Kemp, N & Josephidou, J. (2020) Where are the babies? Engaging under twos with the outdoors. Research report published by CCCU.
• Kemp, N., Durrant, I. & Josephidou, J. (2020) Making connections with their world: Outdoor provision for under twos in early childhood settings in Kent. Research report published by CCCU.

Harmony in Education seeks to build a new approach to learning that is based on seven key principles from nature including interdependence, cycles, diversity, adaptation, health, geometry and oneness. Christ Church is part of its Education Advisory Group together with the University of Winchester, the Institute of Education and the University of Cambridge. In 2019 we led research to explore the educational potential of a Harmony approach in varied settings.

• Kemp, N., Pagden, A & Marshall, J (2019) The educational potential of the Harmony Project. Research report published by CCCU.

In 2016 we embarked on a project along with a number of other EU universities to develop teacher education courses in Israel and Georgia. Funded by the European Union ERASMUS + programme, the aim of the project was to promote curricular reforms for democratic principles and civic education, including sustainability.

Twelve teacher education institutions participated (six in each country) and by the end of the project in early 2020 five new courses had been developed. These courses have been enthusiastically received by both students and tutors and translated into Hebrew and Georgian. The project has also influenced policy decisions at both faculty and institutional level in many of the settings to support the principles of democracy and sustainability, and a number of student Centres of Civic Action have been established.

CURE is an acronym for Curriculum Reform for Promoting Democratic Principles and Civic Education.

Christ Church has particular expertise within the field of narrative and auto/biographical research, and is researching the potential of stories and storytelling as a way of creatively exploring sustainability issues. The project was initially inspired by the work of Booker (2004:556) who argues that “the first concern of stories is to show us the nature of the power of egocentricity and what it does to human beings”.

Initiated by members of the Academy's core sustainability team in 2018, the research involved gathering narrative accounts from staff about their involvement with sustainability. Seven narratives were collected during the first phase and these were analysed and re-presented by a creative writer as a series of fictional stories and poems. You can download a free digital copy of Sustainability Stories to see what we created.

For further reading in this area, we highly recommend:

• Storytelling for Sustainability in Higher Education: An Educator's Handbook.(2020) Edited by Petra Molthan-Hill, Heather Luna, Tony Wall, Helen Puntha and Denise Baden. London: Routledge

In the summer of 2020, delegates from universities and educational organisations in different parts of the UK gathered for a virtual symposium hosted by Christ Church to discuss the relationship between education and sustainability.

The symposium brought together nineteen experienced educators who clearly shared a sense of urgency about the need to respond to the global environmental emergency, along with a commitment to see that education operates as a force for good. These ideas were then developed into an edited book proposal, and in 2022, papers from this symposium were published as part of a special issue in the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, with a guest editorial by Academy team members Dr Stephen Scoffham, Dr Nicola Kemp, and Dr Adriana Consorte-McCrea, and in 2024, Good Education in a Fragile World was published.

This research seeks to develop an understanding of the attitudes, beliefs and knowledge of local people from diverse interest groups towards locally extinct species during the planning stages of their return to Kent.  Collaborative research developed by Adriana Consorte-McCrea (Academy for Sustainable Futures) and Anke Franz (Psychology) about the return of the chough has been completed in 2022, funded by Wildwood Trust and Kent Wildlife Trust.

Further reading related to this topic:

• Oliveira, S., Buckley, P., Consorte-McCrea, A. 2023. A glimpse of the long view: Human attitudes to an established population of Eurasian beaver (castor fiber) in the lowlands of south-east England. Front. Conserv. Sci., Sec. Animal Conservation, Volume 3 - 2022

Research exploring attitudes towards wild carnivores and biodiversity conservation and the role of zoos in promoting positive attitudes towards wildlife conservation. This research has resulted in an international symposium during the 5th European Congress for Conservation Biology ‘Planetary Wellbeing’ in Jyvaskyla, Finland, June 2018, and publication combining experts from the fields of carnivores conservation and zoos from across the globe.

Related publications for further reading

• Consorte-McCrea, A., Fernandez, A., Bainbridge, A., Moss, A., Prévot, A-C., Clayton, S., Glikman, J.A., Johansson, M., López-Bao, J.V., Bath, A., Frank, B. and Marchini, S. (2019). Nature Conservation, Pensoft. DOI 10.3897/natureconservation.37.39501"Large carnivores and zoos as catalysts for engaging the public in the protection of biodiversity”
• Consorte-McCrea, A., Bainbridge, A., Fernandez, A., Nigbur, D., McDonnell, S., Grent, O., Morin, A., (2017).Understanding attitudes towards native wildlife and biodiversity in the UK: the role of zoos. In Sustainable Development Research at Universities in the United Kingdom, ch 17. Ed. Walter Leal Filho. World Sustainability Series, Springer International. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47883-8_17
• Consorte-McCrea, A., Nigbur, D. and Bath, A. (2017) Implications of teenagers' attitudes toward maned wolf conservation in Brazil. Canid Biology & Conservation, 20 (5). pp. 16-24. ISSN 1478-2677

In December 2022, Dr Adriana Consorte-McCrea contributed two pieces of written evidence to an inquiry from the EFRA Committee concerning the reintroductions of wildlife in England. The ‘published written evidence’ was included in the final report from EFRA (page 26 references 4, written with Dr Alan Bainbridge and 25, led as chair of the IUCN/SSC Conservation Translocation Specialist Group Human-Wildlife Interactions Working Group).

This publication is unique and the first one to make recommendations to the English Parliament as part of the effort to address the biodiversity decline in response to The Environment Act 2021 (the Act).

Dr Adriana Consorte-McCrea has been chairing the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Human-Wildlife Interactions in Conservation Translocations Working Group since 2018. This group is responsible for creating guidelines for human-wildlife interactions in conservation translocations (which include reintroductions, rewilding, etc) for the IUCN Conservation Translocation Specialist Group global community.

Related publications for further reading:

• Ruiz-Miranda, C. and Consorte-McCrea, A. (Eds) 2023. Human Dimensions of Animal Translocations in Frontiers in Conservation Science.
• Consorte-McCrea, A., Kolipaka, S., Owens, JR, Ruiz-Miranda, CR and Waters, S (2022) Guidelines to Facilitate Human-Wildlife Interactions in Conservation Translocations. Front. Conserv. Sci. 3:788520. doi: 10.3389/fcosc.2022.788520

Related (past) workshops:

• Consorte-McCrea, A., Waters, S. and Whiley, F. (2023) Human-Wildlife Interactions in Conservation Translocations: developing guidelines. Interactive Session, International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence, University of Oxford 30^th March- 1^st of April, UK.
• Consorte-McCrea, A., Kolipaka, S. and Engel, M. (2022). Developing Guidelines for the Human-Wildlife Interactions in Conservation Translocations. Workshop, Pathways Europe 2022: Human Dimensions of Wildlife Conference “Sharing Landscapes”, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands, October 19-21.
• Consorte-McCrea, A., Owens, J., Ruiz-Miranda, C. 2019. Discussion Group “IUCN SSC Conservation Translocation Specialist Group Human‐Wildlife Interactions Working Group”. International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB), Kuala Lumpur, 21-25 July 2019

This research combines ideas from social psychology, environmental science, education and theology to investigate how Christian people make sense of their responsibility for the natural environment, and how this can inform messages to mobilise the faithful towards concrete climate-protecting actions.

This research is being developed as a collaboration between Dennis Nigbur (Psychology), Adriana Consorte-McCrea (Academy for Sustainable Futures) and David Stroud (Chaplaincy).

Related publications for further reading:

• Leal Filho W, Lange Salvia A, Ulluwishewa R, Abubakar IR, Mifsud M, LeVasseur TJ, Correia V, Consorte-McCrea A, Paço A, Fritzen B, Ray S, Gordon N, Luetz JM, Borsari B, Venkatesan M, Mukul SA, Carp RM, Begum H, Nunoo EK, Muthu N, Sivapalan S, Cichos K, Farrugia E (2022) Linking sustainability and spirituality: a preliminary assessment in pursuit of a sustainable and ethically correct world. J Clean Prod 380(2):135091
• Leal Filho, W. , Dahms, L. and Consorte-McCrea, A. (2019) Sustainability and religion: past trends and future perspectives. In: Leal Filho, W. and Consorte-McCrea, A. , eds. Sustainability and the Humanities. Springer. pp. 611-619 ISBN 9783319953359. World Sustainability Series. Springer International Publishing. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-95336-6 (Internal link available to CCCU staff and students only)

• Consorte-McCrea, A. (Section Editor), 2021. SDG 15: Life on Land, in the Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals series, Leal Filho, W., Azul, A.M., Brandli, L., Lange Salvia, A., Wall, T. (Eds.), pp 1117. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-319-95981-8
• Leal Filho, W. and Consorte-McCrea, A. (Eds), 2019. Sustainability in the Humanities, 690pp. World Sustainability Series. Springer International Publishing. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-95336-6