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This proposal is to explore the interdisciplinary potential of analogue environments created principally for off-world living. This project is designed to bring together UCL’s diverse academic community interested in the challenges of future living under very challenging and radically different conditions to those with which we are familiar. The project will consider the role and design of analogues to aid our learning and understanding of how to live off-world. This will create a robust evidence base for anticipated future large scale collaborative analogue research projects and funding. There are two philosophical motivations for this. The first is to enable a range of social and other scientists together with the wider public to start to really appreciate the challenges to be faced when humans consider or are required to live under environmental conditions substantially outside any standard frame of reference. Whilst initially surviving is a first priority, to live and ultimately thrive in such alien conditions and environments requires substantial alteration in many areas, from setting expectations to use of resources. The second motivation is an understanding that the science of cultivating wellbeing and living conditions in off-Earth environments offers ripe opportunity to consider how we might thrive and adapt in rapidly changing environments on Earth through processes of climate change, resource limitations and biodiversity reduction. Through exploring what the alternative engagements of living off-world will entail, the project will engage us with analogues to help us think through the various adaptations needed to allow sustainable healthy living on Earth.
Social Science Principal Investigator
Dr. Aaron Parkhurst, Lecturer, Biosocial and Medical Anthropology, Anthropology, Social and Historical Sciences, SLASH
Non-Social Science Co-Investigator
Dr. Daniel Brayson, Post-doctoral Researcher, Developmental Neurosciences, Population Health Sciences, LMS
Second Co-Investigator
Professor Andrew Edkins, Professor of the Management of Complex Projects, Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, Bartlett, BEAMS
Early Career Researcher
Myles Harris, PhD student, Institute of Risk and Disaster Reduction, Earth Sciences, Mathematical & Physical Sciences, BEAMS