Travel, Environment, Sustainability: A Literary and Cultural History of Irish and Scottish Coastal Routes

ended

COASTAL ROUTES explores the deep history of human-environment relationships along the environmentally fragile Atlantic coasts of Ireland and Scotland through an interdisciplinary analysis of travel writing between 1770 and 1840. Offering the first comparative study of a neglected archive of Irish and Scottish travel texts from the period, COASTAL ROUTES will energise literary criticism beyond a nation-centred and imperial context by remapping the environmental geography of archipelagic Romanticism. It innovatively combines Environmental Humanities, Archipelagic Criticism and Geocriticism in order to contrast and examine the ways in which tourists construct landscape as a resource; consider how they reflect changing attitudes and values; and demonstrate how environmental narratives grew up around particular locations. COASTAL ROUTES makes a timely contribution to the UN’s Agenda 2030 as it sits at the nexus of Goals relating to sustainable economic growth, consumption and production patterns as well as sustainable development of marine resources. Understanding the historical development of culturally-informed values of the environment as developed in Romantic travel writing allows critical reflection on contemporary practices and future directions. As part of the dissemination plan, project findings will be communicated to the public via social media and a virtual exhibition. COASTAL ROUTES aims at intersectoral knowledge transfer by creating two travel e-brochures made freely available to Visit Scotland and Tourism Ireland for wider dissemination. Through the action, the ER will widen her research expertise, establish a new international network, and develop new skills in public engagement and impact to foster interdisciplinary and intersectoral knowledge transfer to strengthen the knowledge-base of the European Research Area.