Dr Rebecca Collins
Deputy Head
Biography
Rebecca Collins is Deputy Head of the Division of Humanities, Cultures and Environment, and Director of the University's Sustainability and Environment Research and Knowledge Exchange Institute (SERKEI). The RKEI is an interdisciplinary institute that brings together over 150 researchers, providing a platform for collaborations, public events and external partnerships. Rebecca is a human geographer with research interests at the intersection of sustainable lifestyles, environmental care, everyday material culture and young adulthood. She is currently Chair of the Royal Geographical Society's Social and Cultural Geographies Research Group (2023-2026) and Editor at The Geographical Journal (2024-2029), one of the international peer-reviewed journals of the Royal Geographical Society.
Teaching and Supervision
Rebecca teaches across a range of undergraduate modules on the BA Geography course, covering topics including: sustainable development, economic, cultural and political geography, and qualitative research methods. At final year she leads the applied sustainability module 'Sustainable Futures' and an international fieldwork module for human geographers.
Research and Knowledge Exchange
Rebecca is a human geographer with research interests in the social dimensions of sustainable lifestyles and community resilience, the relationship between environmental knowledge and environmental care, material cultures of sustainable consumption, and young adults’ understanding of and engagement with notions of ‘sustainable futures’. Her current research explores the ways in which social and temporal structures impede young adults’ ability to act on their environmental knowledge, how exploring nature at night can prompt novel approaches to engendering environmental care amongst youth, and the aesthetics of sustainable fashion consumption.