Outdoor skill courses merge into ‘Relational Ethnoecology’

Interested MSc students can pre-register for this course from I June 2025 and are advised to do so as soon as possible, as there are a limited number of 45 places available on a ‘first come first serve basis’. MFN students choosing specialisation A (Society and Policy) will receive priority over other MSc students, as this course is a restricted optional. The course requires participants to provide or their own food during the multiday field practicals.

Course coordinator Koen Arts from the FNP chair group says about the new course: “Because the two old course were so closely connected, it made sense to merge them. And Relational Ethnoecology is a name that better reflects the content.”

Ethnoecology is the cross-cultural study of how people interact with their environment. Relational ethnoecology places this in the context of the Anthropocene and its multiple environmental crises, and considers how relational human-environment interactions may inform pathways towards environmental sustainability in (western) societies. Using relational ethnoecology as an overarching framework, the course zooms in on basic skills used in natural and outdoor settings, specifically in relation to fire, food and water, clothing and shelter, tracking, and natural navigation. Key to the definition of ‘basic skills’ are situations in which the use of technique – as opposed to technology – in natural environments is optimised.

Didactically, the course combines theory and practice through relational learning. This means that not just cognitive but also physical and emotional faculties are addressed. Practical, hands-on experiences are used to support theoretical understanding, and vice versa. In other words, students will not just be learning about, but thinking and feeling with and learning through basic skills. The course includes various multiday field practicals.

The deadline for preregistration is 1 week before the regular deadline for period 6 courses. Students for which this course is a restricted optional course should adhere to this deadline to qualify for priority in being enrolled. Very soon after the pre-registration deadline, pre-registered students will receive an email from the course coordinator about the outcome of the selection procedure. Unsuccessful applicants will thus still have a little less than a week’s time to register for a different course without a maximum in period 6. In other words: there is no 'risk' involved in pre-registering.

The old courses have proven to be very popular amongst students; they have been systematically oversubscribed and received high-scoring student evaluations. Anthropology of Outdoor Skill 1 won the 2022 WUR Excellent Education Award in the category ‘special courses’.