A global department
We are the largest department in Lancaster University, which is globally recognised for our quality of teaching and research. Our staff, students and visitors come from around the globe, and as a department, we and are committed to tackling all barriers and challenges to in higher education and research. Through university and strategic partnerships, we are working in Africa, Asia and the Americas, offering opportunities to our students and researchers to be based abroad and to influence the major environmental debates of the future.
Our teaching approach is both theoretical and practical, in the lecture room, laboratory and the field. All our students get the opportunity to carry out fieldwork, either on our doorstep in the beautiful North West of England, with its national parks and contrasting terrestrial and aquatic habitats, or in Europe, Amazonia, the Himalayas, North America, Asia and Iceland. So when our students graduate they have excellent job prospects across a wide range of careers globally.
While we are recognised for the quality of our fundamental research, our ambition is to use that research to provide holistic solutions for today’s big issues, such as living with environmental change, species loss, pollution, energy and water management and providing enough food for the world. So we work in partnership with governments, businesses and communities to put our expertise to good use.
Making connections
We share our facilities (laboratories and offices) with the Environment Agency and 26 businesses in our purpose-built Gordon Manley Building, a facility to encourage commercial sector partnerships. We are also home to one of the Government’s top environmental research laboratories, run by the Natural Environment Research Council’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and that partnership feeds into our own research, providing additional expertise and facilities.
We are still pioneers. We have recently established a sister institution in China, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The International Research and Innovation Centre for the Environment uses our model of drawing together specialists from different disciplines and organisations to address some of Asia’s major environmental issues.
Professor Kirk Semple
Director of the Lancaster Environment Centre