Centre for Human Ecology

About CHE

The Centre for Human Ecology is an independent academic institute, network and registered charity based in Glasgow, Scotland, with an international membership of graduates and fellows. It exists to stimulate and support fundamental change towards ecological and social justice through education, action and research, drawing on a holistic, multidisciplinary understanding of environmental and social systems.

We regularly put on public talks and host popular education discussion sessions on some of the burning issues of our times.

The CHE was founded in 1972 and ran a unique and globally recognised MSc in Human Ecology, produced seminars and conferences featuring leading thinkers and activists and delivered consultancy services to a number of clients and organisations. Today the CHE is moving into a new phase as an emerging centre of excellence, delivering conferences and public events, running short courses and facilitating transformative popular education-building on its tradition as an educational institution rooted in community activism and maintaining academic rigour in its output.

Our aim is to help create responses, informed by the best available research, that address underlying causes of the global environmental and social crises, while encouraging and delivering effective solutions on personal, social and organisational levels. The CHE aims to promote human ecology as a generalist, radical and transdisciplinary tradition in the service of the public good. Its pedagogic ethos, supported by the CHE’s academic board, is strongly influenced by Geddes’ model of head, heart and hand.

There are over 200 CHE graduates and associates that span the globe and are engaged in applied human ecology. The physical Centre, library and hub are located in the hard-pressed community of Govan, Glasgow, where we are committed to addressing the issues of poverty and loss of hope at their root. The CHE is a key partner of Govan Folk University, and sometimes collaborates with other local community organisations.

The Centre, at our AGM in 2015, voted to work towards becoming an educational co-operative, and in 2015 we develop this idea as well as redeveloping our courses. Keep in touch to find out more.

CHE graduates on the MSc in Human Ecology…

“The Masters gave me what I now see is a fairly unique worldview, one of the few that is sufficiently systemic and inclusive so as to inform sustainability initiatives, corporate and civic, in meaningful, consciousness-changing ways.”

“The learning community was such a special part of the CHE. It really was a community with a ‘heart’ quality and the students were amazing. There were qualities of openness, support and of valuing of each others processes.”

“The MSc affected my life in many ways! Personally, I met my partner and together we were inspired by the CHE course to put the theory we learned into practise and start the Earth Connections Sustainability Centre (on Eigg).   We try to put ecological principles into all that we do here – materials and energy we use, our relationships with ourselves and our community, linking local and global issues, the food we eat, the books we read, who we vote for… the list is endless!”