In 2022, a group of researchers and educators from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University came together to explore our pedagogical approaches and highlight possibilities for climate action in higher education classrooms. Our discussions looked at the unique challenges posed by the climate crisis and how we might further define our pedagogical approaches and tools. We produced an article published in Environmental Education to offer more concrete examples of practice for teaching in the climate crisis, attuned to framing, positionality, and reflexivity; multiple temporal and spatial scales; other ways of living and knowing; creative action and activism for an affective classroom. Today, Steph Houghton will present on the methodology and process behind producing this article and the importance of including climate change education across disciplines. Julia Dehm will present current work to mainstream climate change in legal education, including by creating pedagogical resources such as an open-access textbook. 

Dr Julia Dehm is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law, La Trobe University. Her research addresses urgent issues of international and domestic climate change and environmental law, natural resource governance and questions of human rights, economic inequality and social justice. Her books include Reconsidering REDD+: Authority, Power and Law in the Green Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law (edited with Usha Natarajan) and Power, Participation and Private Regulatory Initiatives: Human Rights under Supply Chain Capitalism (edited with Daniel Brinks, Karen Engle and Kate Taylor). She was previously a consultant to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing assistance and a Member of the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton.

Dr Steph Houghton teaches across Development Studies, Planning and Environmental Humanities and works with the Climate Change Adaptation Lab at La Trobe, and as a researcher on the ACIAR project Strengthening Agricultural Resilience in Western Province, PNG (University of Canberra/Western Sydney University).