Dr Rebecca Collins
Deputy Head of Humanities, Cultures and Environment; Sustainability and Environment RKEI Director
Rebecca Collins is Deputy Head of the Division of Humanities, Cultures and Environment, and Director of the University's Sustainability and Environment Research and Knowledge Exchange Institute (SERKEI). The RKEI is an interdisciplinary institute that brings together over 150 researchers, providing a platform for collaborations, public events and external partnerships. Rebecca is a human geographer with research interests at the intersection of sustainable lifestyles, everyday material culture and young adulthood. She is currently Chair of the Royal Geographical Society's Social and Cultural Geographies Research Group.
Rebecca teaches across a range of undergraduate modules on the BA Geography course, covering topics including: sustainable development, economic and political geography, and qualitative research methods. At final year she leads the applied sustainability module 'Sustainable Futures' and an international fieldwork module for human geographers.
Rebecca is a human geographer with research interests in the social dimensions of sustainable lifestyles and community resilience, material cultures of sustainable consumption, and young adults’ understanding of and engagement with notions of ‘sustainable futures’. Her current research explores the ways in which social and temporal structures impede young adults’ ability to act on their environmental knowledge, the aesthetics of sustainable fashion consumption, and how digital technologies can be mobilised to prompt engagement with new pro-environmental behaviours.
- MA (Cantab)
- MSc (UCL)
- PhD (UCL)
- PG Cert. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Chester)
Professional Affiliations
- Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG)
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- RGS-IBG Geographies of Children, Youth & Families Research Group (Workshop Officer 2019-2022; Committee Secretary 2014-2017)
- RGS-IBG Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (member)
- Product Lifetimes and the Environment (PLATE) Conference Scientific Committee member
- AHRC Stitching Together network member