BA Sustainable Development and Literature

About this course

Sustainable development and literature is an unusual and genuinely stimulating combination, bringing together one of the defining intellectual and political challenges of our time with one of the oldest and most enduring of human creative practices. Sustainable development is concerned with meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, encompassing environmental, economic, and social dimensions of human activity and the ways in which they interact. Literature provides the imaginative, narrative, and critical resources through which cultures have always processed their most profound concerns, and environmental writing, nature writing, and climate fiction have become significant areas of contemporary literary production. At the University of the Highlands and Islands, this part-time programme is studied in a flexible mode that allows you to manage your studies alongside other commitments. UHI's distinctive geographical setting in the Scottish Highlands and Islands gives a particular resonance to the themes of sustainable development and the natural environment, and the institution's strong connections with rural, coastal, and island communities create a genuinely grounded context for studying these issues. You will develop understanding of the principles of sustainable development alongside the analytical and critical skills of literary study, examining how writers have engaged with nature, place, ecological crisis, and the question of how human beings should relate to the non-human world. The combination develops the critical thinking, research, and communication skills that are central to both literary study and to engagement with sustainability questions in policy, community, and professional contexts. Graduates from sustainable development and literature programmes pursue careers in environmental organisations, conservation and land management, education, community development, writing and journalism, cultural organisations, and sustainability roles in the public and private sectors. The combination of environmental awareness and literary and critical communication skills is distinctive and applicable across a range of professional contexts. Postgraduate study in literature, environmental humanities, sustainability, or related fields supports those with research or specialist professional ambitions.

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