Dr. Marie Hale is an Associate Tutor with MLA college where she has developed a module on ‘Space and Society, a social lens on Sustainability’. She is also a lecturer in Social Sciences at South Devon University Centre and lecturer at Schumacher College on the MA Movement, Mind and Ecology. Her PhD thesis focused on social change and gentrification in protected areas of England. She is programme lead for the newly created FdSc in Global Change, Sustainability and Society at South Devon University Centre.
As a human geographer, Marie’s research interests focus on people and their relationships to place across a range of contexts (specifically in protected areas) and the interweaving of social and ecological landscapes. Her teaching explores how places are transformed by contemporary processes of (im)mobilities, entanglements between humans and more-than-humans, as well as understanding how places, nature and societies are (re)shaped. She has a deep interest in transformative learning and how embodied practices can lead to a deeper understanding of our world.
Marie’s interest in rewilding emerged through her research on social change in protected areas of England and how different representations of nature can (re)shape protected areas such as England’s National Parks. More recently, her work has been focusing on embodied practices to understand nature’s connections and how rewilding plays a role in fostering positive nature’s relationships between humans, non-humans and more-than-humans. She is interested in comparative studies of rewilding to unpack the complexities of placed-based rewilding projects. Her work is now extending to Rights of Nature in the UK.
