About Us

Taking Philosophy into the Field

To meet today’s challenges, scientists, humanists, and educators not only need to work with other academics, but also with members of the public and private sectors – decision makers, NGOs, and stakeholders groups. We call this “field academics” – emphasizing the importance of taking academic knowledge into settings where its ideas are tested by real world challenges.

This is the mission of  the UNT field station in Environmental Philosophy, Science, and Policy on Navarino Island, Cape Horn, Patagonia. The field station was created in partnership with the Chilean Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB), the University of Magallanes, and the Omora Foundation. A first achievement of this partnership was the creation of the southernmost protected area of the world, the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve, in June 2005. Today the field station serves as a base camp for interdisciplinary research in southern South America and Antarctic Province of Chile (click here for a map of the location).

Using a set of buildings in Puerto Williams (40 miles east of Ushuaia) and UNT video-conferencing capacities in Punta Arenas (at the University of Magallenes) and at UNT, professors and graduate students are currently

• Developing management plans for national parks such as Torres del Paine (Chile) and Los Glaciares National Park (Argentina) that are sensitive to the ethics and values dimensions of the park experience (Jax and Rozzi 2001)
• Exploring the different expressions that burgeoning ecotourism can take throughout the region (García 2004), and the effect that these can have on both the natural and cultural environment of the region
• Ecological, ethical, and political questions surrounding the development of salmon farming (Barros & Harcha 2004).
• Management issues surrounding the introduction of exotic species (such as beaver) in the region (Anderson, et al. 2006)

Through these efforts, UNT Philosophy and its international partners are conducting case studies in interdisciplinarity, providing critical commentary on the forces of globalization and homogenization that threat Cape Horn.

Future Plans

Agreements with German, British, and Chilean institutions are being developed for the purposes outlined above. Supported by UNT commitments, sponsored research, and private grants, students and researchers from UNT and from partner universities will visit the field station for periods between 2 weeks and 6 months. Given its location in the southern hemisphere, CESSP is ideally situated for a minimester session between the two long semesters of the northern hemisphere academic year, and should thus have special appeal to national and international students from more northerly climates. See  http://www.phil.unt.edu/chile/Tracing_Darwins_Path.pdf for an account of our first minimester, offered in January of 2007.

In addition to its on-site resources, the field station will contain video-conferencing capacities (funded by a $50,000 private grant the philosophy department received in 2006), facilitating a program of distance learning that uses the latest technology to connect people in real time around the world. CESSP will draw from a wide variety of UNT departments across campus, from biology and environmental science to economics and anthropology.