About the lecture

"We cannot be educators without instilling hope for the future." Paulo Freire

With a growing backlash towards climate change adaptation, greater emphasis has to be placed on promoting new modes of education and environmental literacy across all aspects of media and communications studies. In this short overview, Professor Brereton will present some of his main findings from Environmental Literacy and New Digital Audiences (Routledge 2019) and suggest how students and scholars can marry media with environmental literacy as we strive to support environmental education as we grapple with a climate emergency.

About the speaker

Professor Pat Brereton teaches at the School of Communication in Dublin City University, Ireland. His academic books include Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema (2005); Continuum Guide to Media Education (2001), Smart Cinema, DVD Add-ons and New Media Audiences (2012), Environmental Ethics and Film (2016) and Environmental Literacy: New Digital Audiences (2019). He has also produced an extensive range of journal articles and book chapters on all aspects of environmental communication and new media. Over the years, he has helped promote PhD research in this broad area, while also supporting a number of funded research projects, including a recently completed EPA project on media coverage of climate change in Ireland and co-PI, examining the Citizen’s Assembly application of deliberative democracy around the topic. Currently, he is chair of a very popularly masters program on climate change at DCU and is secretary on an environment and science sub-committee at the Royal Irish Academy, while remaining actively involved in all aspects of environmental literacy in Ireland and elsewhere.