Dr. Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles | Professor and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education at Southern Cross University, Australia
Friday, January 23, 2026 | 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. (PST) | Hybrid | Scarfe, Room 1328
*Note: this seminar is Hybrid (attend via Zoom, or join us in Scarfe 1328)
For Zoom details, please email edcp.educ@ubc.ca
View the Seminar Poster
Host | Dr. Shannon Leddy
Abstract:
The concept of climate child is an ontological, theoretical, and methodological tussle. The child is typically time bound to either birth to eighteen or birth to twenty-five once the prefrontal cortex has fully developed. As a juxtaposition, climate is intrinsically locked in a fluctuating dance with Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history. Climate has oscillated dramatically and in the last century global surface temperatures have risen 1.1°C above 1850-1900 levels (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2023). Is it a race against time for the future – for both the child and the climate? Lee (2013, p. 4,7) argues that children are readily positioned as ‘human futures’ bringing meaning to adult lives in the face of exponential climate crises – “For many adults, children are an embodiment of hope …. Adult survival fantasies.” In this context, children not only represent continuity but also serve as a lens through which adults navigate their own vulnerabilities and uncertainties. Adult survival fantasies manifested through children, poses pertinent questions about childhood and what childhood is on a planet in climate crisis. Childhood is not a monolithic experience; it is inherently geographical in context and impacted by culture. By way of example, a climate crisis experienced by an Australian child in Lismore is invariably different to a climate crisis experienced by a Somalian child in Sigalow. In Lismore, young people have access to key services, institutional support and to varying degrees privilege. In Sigalow, children experience systemic instability, war, lack of access to essential services and extreme poverty. This disparity exemplifies that the positioning of children within the discourse of climate crises is profoundly influenced by local geographical contexts, thereby necessitating a nuanced understanding of childhood as a multifaceted construct that reflects the diverse realities faced by young people. In this seminar, Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles reimagines climate change education with children and young people by drawing upon significant ‘climate child’ research projects across the last decade.
Short Bio:
Professor Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles is the Executive Dean of Southern Cross University’s world-leading Faculty of Education, as well as the Research Leader of the Sustainability, Environment, and the Arts in Education (SEAE) Research Centre. She is a career primary-secondary school teacher. Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles’s research centres on climate change education, childhood studies, and child-framed research methodologies. She is particularly focused on the pivot points in education, science, and philosophy. Professor Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles has led over 40 national/international research projects, and is presently the lead chief investigator of two Australian Research Council grants on climate change education. She has published more than 180 publications with her latest book entitled Posthuman Research Playspaces: Climate Child Imaginaries (with Rousell, Routledge). Professor Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles has been recognised for both her teaching and research excellence in environmental education, including an Australian Teaching Excellence Award (OLT) and an Australian Association for Environmental Education Fellowship (Life Achievement Award) for her outstanding contribution to environmental education research.
* The Faculty of Education and UBC seek to foster an environment in which respect, civility, diversity, opportunity and inclusion are valued.