Over several decades during the 18th and 19th centuries Scotland was the most rapidly modernising country in Europe. Its transformations in land use, buildings, politics, philosophy, and culture paved the way for industrialism’s profound impacts on the environment and the human condition. This fascinating, creative and overtly interdisciplinary course connects the unique history of the Scottish Lo
wlands to an exploration of environmental change, its global implications with regard to certain facets of modern human existence, and ideas concerning our future. The course aims to stimulate participants to question underlying assumptions about our relationship with the environment, and in doing so, reconsider the predictions, plans, fears, and hopes of humanity. The main elements of the course are delivered via lectures and workshops. The teaching methods in these sessions are progressive in the extent to which they foster and require engagement with online resources, and high levels of interaction between students. The Lectures and workshops are supplemented by visits to special places at the heart of the programme. These introduce participants to a range of new experiences and perspectives to enable exploration in detail of the three globally-significant, interlinked, and highly general concepts: Environment, Change, and the Future. At every stage, dialogue concerning the meaning of these concepts is encouraged by iteratively relating them to an array of particular examples. The course enables students to attain the award of 15 credits for satisfactorily completing assignments. In addition, participating in an end-of-course, student-run conference, students will be able to produce statements about their contributions to this event, for use in their résumés/CVs. However, we intend this course to be altogether more meaningful: by means of our particular combination of the course’s broad concepts, with its detailed subject matter, we aim to provide a potentially enriching educational experience for all participants. The course ambitiously challenges students to think through notions of immense scope (e.g. Environment) to some of their specific instantiations concerning, say, how modernisation has changed the Scottish landscape, how this may again be altered in the future, and the extent to which such processes of thought and study can be valuably reapplied to other situations. Closely in keeping with this, our fundamental educational model is transformative, and is thus intended to help students develop their capacities as independent thinkers within complex contexts of modern existence. This is therefore an excellent starting point for students keen to pursue further study, become involved in active discussions about the present urgent dilemmas for the human condition, and who are willing to meet the leadership challenges of shaping a better future.
