Eco-Psychology: Arctic Field Studies

Semester & Location:	Beginning Summer 2026 - DIS Greenland
Type & Credits:	Arctic Experiential Studies - 3 credits
Major Disciplines:	Psychology, Sustainability, Arctic Studies
Prerequisite(s):	One course in psychology at university level.
Corequisite Course(s):	Kalaallit Nunaat: Greenland’s History, Culture and People, Sociology, Environmental Studies
Faculty Members:	Eleftherios Saftis (current students please use the Canvas Inbox)
Time & Place:	TBA

 

Course Description

Is the current climate crisis only environmental, or does it also have roots that run deeper into our relationships with nature, with one another as humans, and with ourselves?  

Together, we will travel to Greenland to explore the question of climate change and how it extends far beyond environmental transformation alone. Through this starting point, we will examine how climate change intersects with questions of identity, wellbeing, colonialism, community, culture, belonging, mental health, and relationships to land, asking how ecological change reshapes both everyday life and psychological experience.

The course emphasizes learning outside of the classroom and takes place outdoors in the Arctic environment, where you can interact directly with your surroundings and people through observation and conversation while engaging in hands-on activities.  

The course is rooted in theory, but also encourages you to explore beyond traditional scientific boundaries and contemplate the influence of local history, culture, and power on our understanding of knowledge, truth, and health. The goal is not to only comprehend concepts intellectually, but also to emotionally connect with them. The course encourages curiosity and exploration rather than providing final answers or solutions. 

We will approach knowledge as dynamic and embodied, emerging through relationships, reflection, and lived experience. Together, we will question and explore our own subjective experiences, personal histories, and internalized worldviews shaped by how we have participated in the world. Process groups and shared reflection will become spaces where personal story and academic discipline can co-exist. The course will function as an active community where all interactions and experiences are seen as a form of fieldwork. Being unsettled is welcomed and understood as part of learning. The community will be invited to hold tensions and approach them as sites of insight and engagement—psychology as a living experience, an evolving practice rather than be seen as fixed theory and generic categorizations.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Critically evaluate how colonial histories, capitalism, and dominant psychological discourses have shaped perceptions of mental health, cultural identity, and ecological change, using Greenland as a focal case while applying these insights to other populations with histories of colonization, knowledge repression, and displacement
• Apply and critically reflect on eco-psychological theory, liberation psychology, psychoanalytic, humanistic, clinical, and critical frameworks towards understanding climate change and climate justice.
• Engage in reflective, collaborative, and process-oriented learning by exploring the role of selfhood and embodied experience within an Eco Psychology framework.
•  Integrate interdisciplinary perspectives from psychology, anthropology, geopolitics, sustainability, and biology to understand how ecological, cultural, and political systems shape human experience and identity.
• Synthesize academic theory with stories, observations, and lived experiences gathered in the field, and communicate these insights through diverse forms of expression—such as art, performance, creative writing, or multimedia—beyond the traditional academic word.
• Engage in community‑based and relational learning by reflecting on personal experiences, interpersonal relationships, and group dialogue as valid and valuable forms of psychological inquiry and knowledge‑making.

Faculty

Eleftherios Saftis

M.Sc. in Health Psychology (City, University of London, 2000). B.Sc. Hons. in Psychology (City, University of London, 1997). Certified in psychotherapy and counselling and engaged in psychoanalytic training at the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (London) and Freuds Agora in Copenhagen, currently working as a psychoanalyst in practice at Freud’s Agora, Copenhagen.

Co-author of several academic articles on post-traumatic stress disorder, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis. Former Clinical Director at Community Housing and Therapy, a UK charity providing therapeutic community housing for adults with mental health diagnoses. Managed two specialized therapeutic community projects: one focused on homeless ex-service men and women with mental health difficulties, and another serving individuals with psychosis and  borderline personality structures

Previously worked as a psychologist in the Greek Army, offering psychological support in a military context. With DIS since 2015.

Readings

 

Movies/Documentaries and Podcasts

Abraham, N. (Producer). (2025, April). Greenlanders embrace pre‑Christian traditions and reclaim Inuit spirituality [Video]. AP News. https://apnews.com/...

Alluna, L. (Director & Co‑writer), & Peter, A. (Co‑writer) (2023). Twice Colonized [Documentary film]. Ánorâk Film / Red Marrow Media / EyeSteelFilm

Nigro, C. J. (Host). (2025, May 26). Jung and the collective unconscious [Audio podcast episode]. In Psychology Unplugged. Psychology Unplugged. Retrieved from https://podcasts.apple.com/bg/podcast/jung-and-the-collective-unconscious/id1547088092?i=1000709971136

Pidd, H. (Host), & Safi, M. (Host). (2024, April 19). The chilling policy to cut Greenland’s high birth rate [Audio podcast episode]. In Today in Focus. The Guardian. Originally aired April 19, 2024; re‑broadcast December 5, 2024.

Wille, N. (Host). (2024, April 22). The decolonisation of Greenland and Inuit healing [Audio podcast episode]. In Indigenous Futures Podcast. Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4R0R2lmAbAsKgU8hBT6E0G

Visit Greenland; UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. (2018). Inuit drum dancing and singing [Video]. UNESCO Video and Sound Collections. Retrieved August 6, 2025, from https://ich.unesco.org/en/video/57856

Field Studies

Viska Horses — A visit to a new Greenlandic initiative using horses, landscape, and relational practice to think about alternative forms of care and wellbeing.

Unicef — We will be meeting with Tina Dam the Program Chief for UNICEF Greenland and a Greenlandic leader with extensive experience in human rights, child welfare, social policy, and community development, having worked across government, municipal services, criminal justice, and advocacy organizations dedicated to improving the lives and rights of children and families in Greenland.

Greenland National Museum & Archives — We will be having a visit at the Greenlandic National Museum where we will be hearing about Greenlandic history, culture, and traditional practices.  We will also be participating in animal intestines workshop which is a traditional method for processing intestine's. 

Nuuk Art Museum / local art space — A visit exploring how art communicates place, identity, ecological change, emotion, and Greenlandic ways of seeing beyond purely academic or scientific language.

MTO  — Practitioners working with children, care, and community support, inviting reflection on how spaces of care are created and sustained.

GUX Sisimiut  — A meeting around education, youth perspectives, language, climate futures, and what it means to learn in place.

Overnight Camping Trips — These trips invite students to experience Arctic landscapes through shared living, silence, weather, food, shelter, and group reflection, opening questions about nature connectedness, vulnerability, cooperation, and what it means to temporarily make home outdoors.

Saqqaq Ruins, Sisimiut — A group reflection at the ruins, with tea, focused on history, memory, ancestors, and intergenerational stories.

Microgreens / Local Growing Initiative — A visit exploring food, sustainability, local production, climate adaptation, and how care for the future can be practiced through small ecological initiatives.

Guest Lecturers

Niina Isaksen — A psychologist in Nuuk whose work opens questions around identity, belonging, minority stress, and decolonizing psychological practice in Greenland.

Maja Lyberth — A practitioner who will help us explore DEI, minority stress, identity, and belonging in Greenland.

Sila 360 (Najannguaq Hegelund)— A visit exploring minority stress, identity, belonging, representation, rights, and decolonizing psychological practice in Greenland.

Approach to Teaching

The classroom space will seek to challenge prominent and pervasive ideas within the “helping professions”.  Teaching will move beyond the traditional frame of transmitting “knowledge and skills” from one party (student) to another (teacher).  The aim is to help students take responsibility for their own work and learning.  Learning will be experiential and relational—emerging through living, reflecting, and becoming aware.  Students need some initial education such as engagement with theory but at the same time realize the confines of theory and how it can become another form of alienation.

There are some key principles of learning we will strive towards during the course:

• Applying a dialectic operation to the learning environment, which puts the student actively at the center of their own learning.
• Understanding the intersubjective nature of knowledge with its locus, not only in theory but in history and the specificities that each community holds.
• Naming student and teacher desire as the ultimate object of learning.
• Helping students to resist being drawn in the position of expert, to forget what they know, in order to carefully listen to the outside world.
• Helping students engage with material in broad philosophical and literary ways, rather through narrow psychological or medical practice.

Students will be presented with material and invited to co-create spaces for engaging with six broad areas of inquiry during the Eco Psychology course —Critical Psychology & Liberation Frameworks, Eco-Psychological Perspectives of the Self, Eco-Embodiment, Clinical Eco-Psychology & Decolonial Psychological frameworks, and the Psychology of Activism. While in Greenland, these categories will serve as lenses through which students can explore lived realities, cultural dynamics, and ecological transformations, drawing on the insights that eco psychological theory can bring to each theme.

Learning will take place in the classroom and outdoors by creating spaces where students can develop and bring their own research, their own experience, and help them develop their own language in relation to the various experiences they have during the course.

DIS Accommodations Statement

Your learning experience in this class is important to me.  If you have approved academic accommodations with DIS, please make sure I receive your DIS accommodations letter on the first days of class. If you can think of other ways I can support your learning, please don't hesitate to talk to me. If you have any further questions about your academic accommodations, contact Academic Support academicsupport@dis.dk

Expectations of the Students

Academic Honesty:

Students are expected to adhere to high academic standards in both their participation and the work they produce for the course. All ideas and sources must be properly cited and referenced. If anything is unclear, students are encouraged to contact me by email or ask questions in class. While students may use AI tools, they must appropriately reference any material that comes from AI. However, AI will not be accepted as a valid reference; students are expected to consult and cite original sources directly.

Students are expected to engage fully in all classes, activities, and group sessions during the study tour. Nonattendance or poor engagement will result in a lower participation grade.

Participation and engagement:

This course is designed to mirror aspects of a living learning community, where participation extends beyond the classroom. Students are expected to be open, willing to take intellectual and personal risks, and ready to contribute to a shared living and learning experience.

This does not mean the community will always be comfortable or harmonious; productive tensions and differences are part of the learning process. Participation means co‑creating spaces for open expression on both personal and global issues. 

Students are expected to attend all events during the class.  I should be notified before hand for any absences and if you are finding it difficult to engage, you should be open and transparent with me, and we can discuss how we can help make it work for you.

Evaluation

Participation and Engagement

Active participation is at the heart of this course. Students are expected to contribute to discussions, activities, and community living in Greenland with openness, curiosity, and respect. This includes engaging fully in class sessions, field experiences, and group work; listening deeply to others; and being willing to enter into dialogue about personal and global issues raised during the course.

Ecopsychology in Practice: A Participatory Action Research Inquiry

In this final assignment, you will develop an inquiry connecting your experiences in Greenland and Copenhagen with key themes in ecopsychology and course readings. The assignment focuses on how relationships to land, community, identity, colonial histories, and environment shape psychological and cultural experience. Your inquiry should integrate field experiences, observations, reflections, and theoretical concepts developed throughout the course, including material from your field notes and group discussions.

Field Notes

Throughout the course, you will keep a series of field notes and reflections connected to your experiences in Greenland and Copenhagen. The field notes invite you to use the environment itself as a source of learning, including class activities, readings, everyday interactions, landscapes, conversations, travel, and unexpected experiences. Reflections should engage with key course themes in ecopsychology such as community, colonialism, relationships to land, wellbeing, identity, spirituality, and ecological awareness. Field notes may be creative and can include observations, reflections, sketches, photographs, poems, or sensory descriptions. At different points during the course, we will discuss selected reflections in smaller groups as part of our shared learning process

Field Visit Leadership

In groups of two you will take responsibility for introducing the class to selected institutions, professionals, and activities we will encounter throughout the trip. The assignment is intended to help frame and contextualize each visit by connecting field experiences to broader course themes and concepts explored in class.

Eco Psychological Encounters 

Working in pairs, you will plan and lead a short experiential activity for the group connected to themes encountered during our travels and explored throughout the course in ecopsychology. The purpose of the activity is to encourage reflection on our relationship to land, community, wellbeing, identity, and environment through direct experience.

Activities may include nature art, reflective writing, mindfulness in nature, gratitude exercises, silent observation (“sit spot”) exercises, walking reflections, object reflections using natural materials, or sharing circles. You should briefly introduce the activity, explain how it connects to course themes, and guide the group through the exercise and reflection

Raising ecological awareness from experience to communication 

Building on your Participatory Action Research inquiry, this assignment asks you to translate your emerging ideas into a public-facing creative project. Rather than keeping your thinking only within an academic paper, you will create something that can be encountered by others  something visual, sensory, artistic, reflective, or interactive.

Your task is to communicate what your experience in Greenland has helped you understand about ecopsychology, climate change, land, community, belonging, care, or human relationships with the more-than-human world

 

 

Grading

 

Assignment	Percent
Participation & Engagement	10%
Ecopsychology in Practice: A Participatory Action Research Inquiry	30%
Field Notes	10%
Field Visit Leadership	15%
Raising ecological awareness from experience to activism	20%
Eco Psychology encounters	15%
Total	100%

Academic Regulations

Please make sure to read the Academic Regulations on the DIS website. There you will find regulations on:

• Course Enrollment and Grading
• Academic Expectations and Honor Code

 

DIS - Study Abroad in Scandinavia - www.DISabroad.org