My teaching has ranged from courses in environmental ethics and environmental aesthetics, animals and society, ethics, applied ethics, aesthetics and the arts, Kant, and introduction to philosophy, to seminars on subjects such as imagination, Schopenhauer, aesthetics and politics, and philosophy of film. Team-taught courses have included Philosophy of Conservation on the Isle of Rum in Scotland and human geography field courses in North Uist and St. Kilda, Scotland and in Iceland.

I established a multidisciplinary masters programme, MSc Environment, Culture, and Society at the University of Edinburgh in 2007 and served as its Programme Director for ten years. I have supervised masters and PhD students on a range of topics in environmental philosophy, aesthetics, human geography, Kant, and applied ethics.

Current PhD students

I serve on PhD committees at Texas A&M for: Nathan Bitgood (English); Kristian Cantens (Philosophy); and Victoria Green (Philosophy). I’m an external supervisor for Tinna Gunnarsdóttir  (Iceland University of the Arts) and Stephanie Schuster (University of Basel).

Past PhD students (University of Edinburgh only)

Amitangshu Acharya, A Political Ecology of Small Things (Geography)

Mark Eischeid, Sublime Landscapes: Modernist American Landscape Architecture and the Artificial Infinite (with Iain Boyd Whyte, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture)

Sarah Govan, The Past In the Present: to what extent does landscape policy in Scotland accommodate the historic dimension? (with Nina Morris, Geography)

Nicole Hall, Aesthetic Perception, Nature, and Experience (with Dave Ward, Philosophy)

Leslie Mabon, Respect for nature at 200 km/h? Rally driving in Scotland and environmental responsibility

Carlos Portales, Leibniz and the Objectivity of Beauty (with Pauline Phemister, Philosophy)

Jonathan Prior, The Role of Aesthetic Value in Ecological Restoration: Cases from the United Kingdom

Tiago Torres-Campos (Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, with Mark Dorrian).

Thérèse Yarde, Perceptions of Nature in the Caribbean Island of Dominica