Dr Jonathan Coope

In IESD, Jonathan is deputy module leader on ‘Sustainable Development in Practice’ (a module within the MSc Energy and Sustainable Development). For DMU Education Academy, Jonathan teaches on the PGCert Empowering Education. He was Research Fellow on a two-year GCRF, MRC and AHRC funded £200K theatre and mental health project which he co-devised based in Pune, India. Jonathan has taught acting/performance skills on DMU's 3-day 'Effective learning and teaching' course and co-presented staff workshops on 'The joy of systems thinking' and 'Systems thinking for academics'. He was appointed a DMU Teacher Fellow in 2020.

Jonathan has been Research Fellow on two AHRC funded History projects at Nottingham University and has taught History and Humanities at Derby University. He was on the curriculum working group for the Lincoln Social Science Centre (a free, cooperative HE institution established in 2011 in the wake of the Occupy movement) and co-organized Rescue!History’s 2014 conference on ‘History and Climate change: what have we learnt?’.

Jonathan’s PhD in history was ‘Pathologizing Modernity: critical implications of conceptions of pathology and higher sanity in the works of Theodore Roszak and Ken Wilber’ which critically examined two of the more sophisticated eco-psychiatric understandings of ecocrisis. His research continues to focus on eco-psyche relations, and on related critiques of modernity, techno-science and eco-crisis. 

Prior to joining DMU, Jonathan trained and worked as an actor and was Literary Director of the British Shakespeare Company.

Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development (IESD)

Mary Seacole Research Centre (MSRC)

Books:

• Coope, J (2025). Climate, Health, and Environmental Humanities. Elements in Health Humanities book series. Cambridge University Press. (forthcoming)
• Kopacz, D., Coope, J., Hartmark-Hill, J., and McFarland, J. (eds.). (2025). Towards an Ecological  Medical and Health Humanities. Springer. (forthcoming)

Journal articles – peer reviewed:

• Coope, J (2025). Functional stupidity and the modern knowledge condition: Martin Davies on cognitive psychopathology. Rethinking History, special issue on Martin Davies. (forthcoming).
• Coope, J (2021). On the need for an ecologically dimensioned medical humanities. Medical Humanities, 47:123-127. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2019-011720
• Coope, J (2021). How might indigenous decolonization agendas inform Anthropocene historiography? Rethinking History, special issue on history during the Anthropocene. 25(4): 508-533. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2021.1985811
• Brown, B, Raghavan, R, Coope, J, Crossley, M, Sivakami, M, Gawde, N, Pendse, T, Jamwal, S, Barrett, A, Dyalchand, A, Chaturvedi, S, Chowdray, A, and Heblikar, D. (2021). Idioms of resilience: mental health and migration in India. International Journal of Social Psychiatry. August 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/00207640211042916
• Coope, J (2020). Indigenous knowledge and techno-scientific modernity: 'hierarchical integration' reconsidered. Ecopsychology, special issue on wisdom traditions, science, and care for the Earth, 12(2): 151-157. https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2019.0050
• Coope, J., Barrett, A., Brown, B., Crossley, M., Sivakami, M., and Raghavan, R. (2020). Resilience, mental health and urban migrants: a narrative review, International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, 16(2), 137-159. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMHSC-04-2019-0048
• Coope, J, Jamwal, S, Pendse, T, Raghavan, R (2020). Reflections on the use of mental health resilience concepts in migration and global mental health. International Journal of Mental Health, special issue on Global Mental Health: training in an international context, 48(4): 299-308. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207411.2019.1708646
• Coope, J (2019). How might Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge (ITEK) inform ecopsychology? Ecopsychology, special issue on Indigenous decolonization and ecopsychology, 11(3): 156-161. https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2019.0005
• Crossley, M, Barrett, A, Brown, B, Coope, J and Raghavan, R (2019). Systematic review of applied theatre practice in the Indian context of mental health, resilience and well-being. Applied Theatre Research, 7(2): 211-232. https://doi.org/10.1386/atr_00017_1
• Coope, J (2010). Ecopsychology and the historian: some notes on the work of Theodore Roszak. European Journal of Ecopsychology, 1: 4-18.
• Coope, J (2008). The ecological blind spot in postmodernism. New Formations, special issue on Earthographies: ecocriticism and culture, 64: 78-89.

Journal articles - other:

• Beckett, J, Coope, J, Elliott, P and Mills, J (2017). Nottingham’s Green Spaces. East Midlands History and Heritage, 05: 26-29.
• Coope, J and Mills, J (2014). Reflections on a co-production project: the story of the Social World of Nottingham’s Green Spaces project. The Local Historian, 44: 335-340.

Book chapters:

• Coope, J (2025). Health humanities and environmental issues. In Crawford, P. and Kadetz, P. (eds.), Palgrave Encyclopedia of Health Humanities. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (forthcoming)
• Coope, J (2025). People and green spaces. In Crawford, P. and Kadetz, P. (eds.), Palgrave Encyclopedia of Health Humanities. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (forthcoming)
• Raghavan, R, Brown, B, Coope, J, and Sivakami, M (2022). Resilience, mental health and migration. In Bhugra, D., Moussaoui, D., and Jamieson-Craig, T. (eds.), Oxford Textbook of Social Psychiatry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198861478.003.0061
• Raghavan, R, Coope, J, and Brown, B (2021). The untold story of mental health and resilience of internal migrants in India. In Moussaoui, D., Ventriglio, A., Bhugra, D. and Tribe, R. (eds.), Mental Health and Illness in Migration. New York, NY: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2366-8_43
• Coope, J, Mills, J, Prosser, M and Smith, M (2021). The Forest. In Beckett, J and Elliott, P (eds.), Nottingham’s Green Spaces. Derby: Peregrine Publishing.
• Coope, J (2020). Horticultural arts. In Crawford, P., Brown, B. and Charise, A. (eds) The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities. London: Routledge, 358-362. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429469060
• Coope, J (2010). On reading history as a mental health issue. Chapter 11 in Levene, M, Johnson, R and Roberts P (eds.), History at the End of the World? History, Climate Change & the Possibility of Closure. Penrith: Humanities-Ebooks.
• Coope, J (2008). On the plotting of 21st century history from an environmental perspective. Chapter 3 in Miyares, R and Gonzalez, C (eds) Culture and Power: The Plots of History in Performance. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.
• Coope, J (2007). Theodore Roszak: explorer of counter culture. In Kumar, S and Whitefield, F (Eds), Visionaries: The 20th Century's 100 Most Important Inspirational Leaders. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. 

Book reviews:

• Coope, J (2014) review of Nicholas Maxwell, How Universities Can Help Create a Wiser World: the urgent need for an academic revolution (2014), in Metapsychology online, metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=7182.
• Coope, J (2008) review of Martin Davies, Historics: Why History Dominates Contemporary Society (2006), in Rethinking History, 12(4): 569-572. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642520802460653 

• ecopsychology
• ecological humanities
• medical humanities
• sustainability
• historical theory

MSc Energy and Sustainable Development:

• Leading Change for Sustainability

PGCEE/PGCert Empowering Education:

• Reimagining Higher Education: addressing inequality and justice in educational practice

In my previous teaching on the MSc Medical Leadership, Education and Research:

• Personal Professional Development
• Concepts in Leadership, Education and Research
• Development of a Service Improvement Strategy
• Research Methods and Project

In my previous teaching on the BA History at Derby University:

• The Making of Modern Medicine, 1750-1950
• Historical Methods and Sources
• Britain in the Age of Innovation, 1790-1914
• Society, Culture and Politics in the First World War

In my previous teaching on the MA Humanities at Derby University:

• Research Skills
• Research Methodologies

• PhD History (University of Southampton)
• PG Dip Acting (Drama Studio London)
• MA The History of Scientific Thought (University of Leeds)
• PGCE Mathematics (University of Nottingham)
• BSc Eng (Hons) 2i, Electrical Engineering (Imperial College London; BBC sponsored).

• Senior Fellow of the HEA (SFHEA)

• “neo-Romanticism within eco-activism – and its critics”, Nature, Thinking: from Romanticism and Idealism to Ecological Philosophy, The Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion international conference, Liverpool Hope University (online), July 2024.
• "How addressing issues of equity and justice is central to De Montfort University’s new PGCert lecturer training: a follow-up report on its first year of delivery", with Dr Hardeep Basra, Annual 'Equity in Education & Society' conference (Scotland), Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, May 2024.
• "On religion and 'intervention points' models in systems thinking", Environmental endings and religious futures, British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) Annual Conference, Clare College, Cambridge, September 2023.
• "How addressing issues of equity and justice is central to De Montfort University's new PGCert lecturer training: a progress report", with Dr Hardeep Basra, Annual 'Equity in Education & Society' conference, Institute for Education & Social Equity, London South Bank University, June 2023. 
• Keynote lecture: 'What are the obstacles to an ecological medical humanities?' The Second Annual Nature & Medicine Event (online), The Doctor as Humanist and Ars Medica, November 2022.
• “Indigenous ‘outreach work’ to technoscientific modernity: three strategies”. (Environmental Justice and Alternatives to Development in Latin America: Knowledge, Narratives and Cultural Production, University of Leicester, 2020).
• "Migration and resilience narratives" with Prof Brian Brown. (Mental health, migration and resilience: innovative applied arts based methodologies for research policy and practice, De Montfort University, 2019).
• “Nottingham’s Green Spaces” with Dr Judith Mills. (National Trust Nottingham Centre, New Mechanics Institute, Nottingham, 2019).
• Invited delegate. (Engaging Parliaments with Academic Research, Mobilising Global Voices International Development conference, Westminster Hall, UK Parliament, 2019)
• “Victorian parks and well-being: evidence, histories and public health”. (Humanities, Heritage and Public Policy conference, Derby Museum and Art Gallery, 2018)
• "Green lungs: historic urban parks, public health and wellbeing". (Nature Connections conference, University of Derby, 2018).
• "Mental health issues of internal migrants in India: some thoughts on strengths and weaknesses of current data" poster, with Prof Raghu Raghavan. (1st World Congress on Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Health, University of Edinburgh, 2018).
• “Reframing May ’68 and the sixties counter culture: a case study in eco-psychiatric historiography”. (Other ‘68s: Lineages and Legacies of May ’68 conference, University of Nottingham, 2018)
• “The contribution of actor/theatre training to ‘disruptive’ teaching in the age of ecological emergency”. (Provocative Pedagogies: Performative Teaching and Learning conference, University of Lincoln, 2017)
• “The psychoanalytic meaning of history and climate change: on the strengths and weaknesses of eco-psychoanalysis”. (Mediating Climate Change conference, University of Leeds, 2017)
• “On Eco-psychiatry & historiography: exploring transcultural mental health narratives via the lens of nature-connectedness theory”. (Reading Bodies, Writing Minds: Mental Health in the Medical Humanities conference, University of Nottingham, 2017)
• “Exploring nature-connectedness as a ‘frame’ for our dialogues between Western expertise and traditions from other spatially or historically distant cultures”. (Other psychotherapies – across time, space, and cultures conference, University of Glasgow, 2017).
• “Parklands in wartime: the history of Nottingham’s parks in WW1 and WW2”. (Nottingham Local Studies Library, 2016).
• “Nottingham’s historic green spaces: controversies and contestation”. (Heritage Open Days, St Ann’s Allotments, Nottingham, 2016).
• “Ecopsychology and its psychological critique of urban industrialism”. (Utopian Studies Society 16th International Conference, University of Newcastle, 2015).
• “How might the traditions of therapeutic communities and greencare inform our re-visioning of social futures?” Roundtable, with Prof Lucy Sargisson, Dr Rex Haigh and Dr Neil Chadborn. (AHRC Connected Communities symposium on Utopias, Futures and Temporalities: Critical considerations for social change, Bristol Zoo, 2015).
• “Making history with the community: the Nottingham Green Spaces project” with Dr Judith Mills. (The Social History of Public Urban Spaces conference, University of Nottingham, 2014).

• peer reviewer for Oxford University Press, book proposals (medical humanities)
• peer reviewer for Routledge, book proposals (medical humanities)
• peer reviewer for Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development 
• peer reviewer for Medical Humanities
• peer reviewer for Ecopsychology
• peer reviewer for European Journal of Ecopsychology
• peer reviewer for Modern Languages Open
• peer reviewer for Human-Animal Interactions
• contributor to Palgrave Encyclopedia of Health Humanities. London: Palgrave Macmillan (2023, forthcoming).
• contributor to The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities. London: Routledge (2020). 
• Editorial Committee of European Journal of Ecopsychology (2011-2014)