Planetary Praxes and Sustainable Universities

What is sustainability in Higher Education (HE)? How should it be represented? Who gets to decide? This thesis offers a response to a particular technocratic and teleological way of thinking about sustainability in Higher Education, which has a series of high profile advocates in theory and policy. In contrast, my study explores two particular sustainability projects (Energy Management Project and Local Food) at a large Canadian suburban university campus. Using a grounded theory/situational analysis approach, I represent these two projects as dynamically bound praxes (shaped by a series of actors and imaginaries). Results: given the historical exigency and contention surrounding sustainability since the mid-90s, a multiplicity of actors in the Keele campus, both semiotic and material, have moved into positions to transform its demarcated boundaries therein. As I have begun to map these movements, I suggest this work be continued by future researchers in a position to do so.