Program Overview

Our combined degree of English Studies and Climate Change at Aberystwyth University provides a thorough and critical understanding of the ideological debates that shape the ways we read and write, challenge our perceptions of the places we read and write about, and interrogate who we are.

Come and join us in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth to study this fascinating and topical subject. You will encounter texts that explore and represent climate change, that evaluate the climate challenge and its political, economic, social, and ecological impacts.

By raising provocative questions about human responses to climate change, this course will equip you with the skills and knowledge to analyse diverse perspectives on a global challenge. You will also have an opportunity to develop your own writing across a wide range of styles, informed by your understanding of the science and politics underpinning the climate crisis.

Why study English Studies and Climate Change at Aberystwyth University?

• You will be part of an exciting Interdisciplinary Learning Community where you will investigate the science of climate change from multiple subject perspectives (Geography, Biology, Politics, and of course Literary analysis).
• You will engage in a problem-based learning approach where you will be presented with real-life scenarios and simulations, enabling you to develop negotiation and team-building skills that are essential to a wide range of employment settings.
• You will gain subject-specialist knowledge of fictional and non-fictional responses to the climate - from Romanticism’s accounts of 1816 “the year without a summer” to alternate futures analysis in contemporary speculative fiction.
• You will analyse the causes and consequences of climate change and environmental degradation, and how literature from the nineteenth century to the present-day comments upon climate change.
• You will develop practical skills in Crisis Writing across genres and forms whilst also acquiring the subject-specialist knowledge and skills of an English graduate, including the ability to draw on your experience and knowledge of this fascinating subject in your own writing about the climate crisis.
• You will examine links between climate change and other global challenges (such as conflict, migration, inequality, and isolationism) and the ways in which these challenges are communicated to diverse audiences.
• You will reflect on the ways in which the planet’s habitats, resources, and ecological systems are reflected in the stories we tell and how such stories challenge the political status quo.