PhD training for new era of thought leaders.

The Gund Institute for Environment and McGill University have partnered to launch the Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E) PhD program.

The Ecozoic era, coined by Thomas Berry, is a vision for a future founded on mutually enhancing relationships between human societies and the global community of life. Leadership for the Ecozoic will chart a course for enabling this new era.

Charting a sustainable future

Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E) is a global partnership – initially based at UVM and McGill University – that develops thought leaders for a new Ecozoic era by:

  • Co-creating a global research-to-action network to heal and restore Earth’s life support systems and foster a mutually-enhancing human-Earth relationship
  • Mobilizing and focusing higher education resources and communication on multi-faceted, human-induced, planetary disturbances
  • Advancing transdisciplinary scholarship in select doctoral programs to educate and empower new leaders for the Ecozoic

The L4E cohort will focus on developing and applying systems-based approaches to ecological economics, law, ethics, and related transdisciplinary efforts to research and chart pathways to the Ecozoic.

The partnership builds on UVM's and McGill's strengths in Ecological Economics, and an Economics for the Anthropocene (E4A) partnership, which includes about 40 graduate students, 80 collaborators, and 25 academic, government and NGO partners.

Contacts

University of Vermont
Prof. Jon Erickson: jon.erickson@uvm.edu

McGill University
Prof. Peter G. Brown: peter.g.brown@mcgill.ca

Gund Student and Alumni Stories

Learn about Gund students and alumni like Phoebe Spencer, who interned at the United Nations before joining the World Bank after graduation.

Key Dates

  • The inaugural L4E cohort started Fall 2018.