Professor Patrick Dillon

About me:

Throughout my academic career, I have researched human-environment interrelationships. My first degree is in biology and my early research was in human impacts on ecological systems. This involved studying changing patterns of land-use and was the subject of my PhD, in environmental history. In parallel with this research I worked in teaching and my attention turned to social and educational systems, more recently those mediated by technology, such as e-learning and social media. I am particularly interested in how people experience the world, and how they come to understand it. The common theme through all of this work is the ways in which people engage with the resources, affordances and constraints of the environments in which they live, work and learn. I call these patterns of engagement ‘cultural ecologies’.

I have worked in higher education since 1981, first at Bulmershe College in Reading, then at the University of Reading where I was a senior lecturer and, from 2000, in professorial positions at the University of Exeter, The University of Joensuu, Finland, and the University of Eastern Finland.

Interests:

Cultural ecology, in which the major questions are about:

• How we shape, and are shaped by the environments in which we live.
• How we experience the world and how we come to understand it.
• The relationships between perception, cognition and consciousness.

I have researched these questions through my work in environmental history, cultural studies, design, crafts, environmental education, technology mediated environments (e-learning and social media) and transdisciplinary studies. Publications at:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Patrick_Dillon

I have supervised 24 doctorates to completion, including 20 at the University of Exeter 2000-2010.