The Human Environments Workshop (HEW) is a research laboratory convened by anthropologists Noah Pleshet and Daniel Tubb at the University of New Brunswick.
Bringing together friends---faculty, researchers, and students---as peers, we are committed to fostering cutting-edge research on humans and their environments by established and emerging scholars, and to providing students with a context for unique intellectual and professional development.
HEW assembles specialists in humanistic environmental research from various educational backgrounds. The organization is distinctive in Atlantic Canada while reconsidering Atlantic world perspectives and beyond.
We are committed to a humanistic understanding of the environment, drawing on perspectives from critical cultural studies, natural and cultural resource management, and economic and environmental justice studies.
HEW considers human environments in their broadest perspective, opening up a discussion of the limits of the human and its interactions with the more than human world in different cultural spheres. The lab takes an infrastructural approach to environments, which can range from wild spaces to digital domains, considering design and material construction alongside environmental justice rooted in political-economic power structures.
HEW is an incubator of ideas and a hub of knowledge at the University of New Brunswick. It is an autonomous home for our collective research and outreach.
We are committed to reimagining the present to envision alternative futures. The workshop seeks to respond to climate change, but also to a crisis in the university and the need to rethink collaboration, research, and productivity.
Support and Funding
HEW projects have received support from:
- University of New Brunswick
- SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council)