Webinar: Climate Justice in the Classroom: Empowering Students as Agents of Change

Bill Finnegan is the Sustainability Education and Research Manager at the University of Oxford, where he also leads the Vice-Chancellor’s Colloquium on Climate in the Department for Continuing Education, serves as a co-investigator of both the Education and Training for the Climate research hub and the Museum of Climate Hope public engagement project, and co-teaches an environmental education module in the School of Geography and the Environment. Bill’s research explores climate change education and pedagogies of hope, and includes digital storytelling methodologies. Bill co-founded Tamarack Media Cooperative, and his documentaries have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and US public television, presented at film festivals around the world, and his film Biophilic Design: the architecture of life is distributed for educational institutions through Bullfrog Films. Bill has collaborated with a number of environmental education organisations, including serving as an advisor on the Guidelines for Excellence series of the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE). He was awarded the NAAEE Director’s Award for his contributions to environmental education in 2016.

Isobel Talks is a post-doctoral researcher, lecturer and consultant. She earned her DPhil in 2022 from the Department of Education at Oxford, with a dissertation critically examining development and education in Bangladesh. Isobel co-created and co-teaches the course ‘Environmental Education in the Geography department at Oxford with Bill. Isobel is a Co-Investigator on the ‘Skills for Sustainable Farming Futures’ Fell Funded project which is hosted by both the Education and Training for the Climate hub and the Centre on Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) at the Department of Education at Oxford. She also helps to facilitate the Agroecology Research Collaboration which is hosted by the Landworkers’ Alliance. Previously Isobel was a researcher on two projects about climate change education – ‘Trust and Climate Change: Information for Teaching in a Digital Age’ and ‘Climate Change Education Futures in India’ – as well as a project on refugee health education and an educational inclusion project that explored the ways learning to code might benefit disadvantaged young women in the UK. Alongside her academic work, Isobel is also an independent consultant and researcher for organisations including the National Association for Environmental Education, the North American Association for Environmental Education, Plan International, FCDO, and Save the Children.

Justin Dillon is professor of science and environmental education in the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education at University College London. He is Guest Professor at Zhejiang University, China and was the 2024 CJ Koh Professor in Education, at the National Institute for Education, Singapore. Justin taught science in London schools for 10 years before joining King’s College London in 1989. In 2014, he was appointed Head of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Bristol. Justin joined the University of Exeter in 2017 where he was Director of Research in the School of Education. He returned to London in 2022 to take a chair at UCL. Justin was President of the European Science Education Research Association from 2007-11. He is President of the National Association for Environmental Education, Chair of trustees at the Exeter Science Centre and a trustee of the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom. In 2023, Justin was presented with a Mariano Gago lifetime achievement award by Ecsite, the European association for science and discovery centres, for his commitment to science engagement. He edits the journal, Studies in Science Education and is Associate Editor of Environmental Education Research.