Education - dr. RJ (Robert) Coates

I teach a range of courses at Wageningen on development, environment, and disaster. These include the introductory development studies course for the master Development and Rural Innovation programme, and courses in disaster studies that deal with broad conceptual themes including urban governance and environmental degradation, that draw students from various natural and social science programmes. I also teach on the PhD course Critical Perspectives in Social Theory, while at BSc level I coordinate the Minor Disaster Risk and Resilience.

In terms of thesis supervision, I am especially interested in students extending political ecology analyses of environmental change and disaster, where possible through local, grounded fieldwork to uncover peoples' interpretations of land use change, government policies, private interests, and future change. This might mean uncovering how political and economic power operate through interviewing and observing different sides in an environmental conflict or debate, or tracing a policy from drawing board to implementation.

I have enjoyed supervising students on urban hazards and vulnerabilities, on urban governance, on wildfires at the urban-rural interface, as well as on broader development politics questions such as on extractivism vs conservation or the rise of the new populist Far Right.