Andrew Phillips ^WORK

︎Unceded Coast Salish Lands & Waters
Born at 338.08 ppm

Environmental educator, designer, academic, community organizer [and sometimes artist]. Working to advance social and ecological justice within an entangled human and more-than-human world. Alum of Queen's University (Political Science), the Institute without Boundaries (Interdisciplinary Design), and the University of British Columbia (Bachelor of Education for Sustainability; Master of Educational Studies).

I’m interested in applied philosophy, critical pedagogies of place, and creative public engagement with political ecology. In other words, the ethico-onto-epistemological dimensions at the heart of ecological issues, matters, and concerns.

Understanding and tackling earth’s pressing problems — climate change, ecological collapse, biocultural diversity loss, extreme weather events, food/water shortages, poverty and inequality, gendered and racialized violences, compromised mental health, economic precarity, governance failures, etc. — is a complex eco-social task. It requires a rigorous exploration of how the environment shapes, and is shaped by, systems like politics, economics, science, culture, history, and social movements. If everything is connected, respecting this reality involves the work of (re)clarifying and (re)experiencing relations (making them both known and felt) so that we might better recognize and (re)orient ourselves towards wise perception and meaningful action.

Within this framework, I’m curious about how insights from education, art, political ecology, philosophy of mind, new materialisms, and Indigenous cosmologies can work together as an interdisciplinary lens to illuminate the sociocultural dimensions of ecology and the politics of environmental knowledge:

How is “nature” constructed, given meaning, and understood in different contexts?
How is environmental knowledge produced, contested, and validated in different domains?
How do sociocultural factors influence how communities frame environmental issues?
How do environmental issues shape debates about topics like politics, justice, freedom, and social change?

As a graduate student I explored social practice art as a mode of environmental education otherwise, investigating how artists’ projects created pedagogical encounters that produced different knowledge differently (upending conventional approaches to knowledge creation, dissemination, and teaching, and troubling dominant modern/colonial paradigms of environmental thought and action).

With a diverse background spanning the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, I have contributed to projects in healthcare, public policy, urban planning, education, the arts, civic engagement, advocacy, and sustainable development, both locally and abroad. I’m motivated by initiatives that strengthen communities and promote the well-being of both people and the planet.

View my CV here.

＋

he / him. settler. amateur naturalist. lyric / philosophy. cloud appreciator. middling poet. wisdom & metaphor. effort & grace. questions & ideas. knowing / not knowing. systems, souls, and society. wilderness guide. paddling, cycling, climbing, skiing, running, surfing. hiking. maps and packs. books, films, and music. age for sound. sports: general. social practice / relational aesthetics. community & family. neighbourhoods / kitchen tables. 35mm. field recordings. dawn choruses / night swims. 198. 55. 11. 10a. 10b. three. radical hospitality. public spirit champion. life shared. moving like a river. circulating the good. making it matter. staying together, learning the flowers, going light. listening to wendell: the mind that is not baffled is not employed. the impeded stream is the one that sings.

Find me on Instagram, eBird, iNaturalist, and Strava.
You can also send me an email.