This session is open to the public.

Sustainability science has spent three decades building an evidence base on the ecological and social-scientific dimensions of environmental crises, and refining the policy and technical responses that follow from it. Yet as climate change, biodiversity loss and social instability converge into what many now call a global 'polycrisis', a growing number of scholars argue that these responses address symptoms rather than roots, and that deeper change requires attention to the values, worldviews and modes of consciousness that shape how humans relate to the living world and one another. In this seminar I offer a view of this rapidly expanding 'inner transformations' agenda while grounding it in geographical particularities. I trace the conceptual foundations that gave rise to this agenda, present insights from my own research on the pluralism of nature's values, the intersection of religion and sustainability governance, and radical approaches to sustainability pedagogy, and identify the conceptual and methodological developments now pushing the field forward. I close by arguing for a more integrated inner-outer approach to sustainability science – one in which the social sciences and humanities have a central role to play in shaping the future of scholarship, policy and practice.

Christopher Ives
University of Nottingham

Christopher Ives is Associate Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham, where he also directs the MSc in Environmental Leadership and Management. He was awarded his PhD in 2012 from Macquarie University, Sydney, and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Melbourne, RMIT University, and Leuphana University Lüneburg before moving to Nottingham in 2016. His disciplinary origins lie in urban ecology and environmental planning, and his early research developed explored the application of biodiversity science to environmental decision-making, and spatial approaches to mapping social and landscape values for green space. Since then his work has broadened into an interdisciplinary sustainability science that explores sustainability transformations, diverse values for nature, and the role of religion and inner change in shaping human-environment relationships. He serves as an Editor of Sustainability Science, and has supervised over 60 undergraduate, masters and doctoral researchers. In 2024 he received the Lord Dearing Award for excellence in teaching and learning at the University of Nottingham. Chris is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Advance HE, and a member of the Society for Social-Ecological Systems.