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Wales and the Welsh government’s forward thinking with regards the environment, sustainability, climate change, culture, community, and the future stands out in UK politics. With UWTSD’s focus on interfaith, intercultural peace promotion, Materialities and future generations, the UWTSD Hub aims to find new ways to generate discussion, stimulate research and produce strategies that allow multi-species, more-than-human communities to negotiate a new safe and fair pathway into our shared futures.
A Welsh hub not only fills a regional opening but also coupled with UWTSD’s newly aligned focus on the promotion of peace, it provides an additional dimension to the fullest notion of what sustainability might look like.
– Nikhil Seth, UN Assistant Secretary General
We’re a dynamic group of individuals who are passionate about what we do and dedicated to delivering the best results for our clients.
Deputy Executive Director of UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition and Director of the UK BRIDGES Hub at UWTSD. She is an Associate Professor in Anthropology with a focus on Environmental Anthropology (Water) and New Materialities.
Director of research at the UK BRIDGES Hub at UWTSD. She is a Professor of Mid Eastern
Senior Administrative Officer and Communications Lead, responsible for administration, coordination and communications of the UK hub.
Sustainability Advisor.
Research Assistant working on 'AHRC Mission Award for REPAIR: Retrofitting for the Future, nature based solutions'. Lead on the Well-being of Future Generations Pledge.
Project Officer, working closely with the Directorate and UNESCO-MOST, supporting projects within the IPO and UK Hub.
Lead Ethnographer on the Teifi Fyw project
Expanding Horizons in Humanities-Led Sustainability: At UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES, we are delighted to be part of a collaborative research project taking place across the Swansea Bay region. Building directly upon the foundational work of Project REPAIR: Retrofitting for the Future, the project examines how local residents experience low-carbon technologies and retrofitted net-zero housing.
An exciting update from our UK Hub - During the recent UNESCO MOST Transformations Week in Paris, the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES UK Hub—based at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) contributed to the BRIDGES Workshops Day on 30 September, which brought together diverse participants to translate theoretical frameworks into tangible, real-world action. The workshops created vital spaces for knowledge exchange. Their core aim was to generate practical insights to directly feed into the newly approved BRIDGES Policy Toolkit, which will be stress-tested worldwide through UNESCO field schools. By creating the space for participants to learn directly from one another, the sessions generated actionable insights designed to align academic research, frontline practice, and inclusive policy development.
In this piece Gareth Thomas reflects on an extraordinary cross-continental journey that brought Welsh river fishers and Alutiiq communities together in Kodiak. Rooted in the international Coastal TALES project, this story explores how shared stories over salmon stocks, environmental regulation, and cultural survival can connect two vastly different worlds — "It is not every day that you set off from Wales in the middle of the night, bound for Kodiak Island in Alaska with two traditional Welsh coraclemen. But that was exactly what I was doing in August 2026. After four flights and around 36 hours of travelling, we landed at a small local airport to meet our American research colleagues and their Alutiiq partners. Somewhere among our luggage, carefully carried across several thousand miles, was a miniature traditional coracle made by one of the last people in Wales still making them. We unwrapped it in airport car park and breathed a sigh of relief, the fragile miniature boat had made it."
Author: Gareth Thomas. Coracle fishing on West Wales's River Tywi is an ancient tradition facing severe threats from pollution and declining fish stocks. As explored in this blog post, the ethnographic short film Yma o Hyd: The Ancient Art of Fishing in Wales reveals how preserving this unique food culture requires protecting the active livelihoods and ecological knowledge that sustain it.
Among contributions to the publication, 'Bridging History and Policy: Essays on Resilience, Sustainability and Systems Modelling', is a chapter by BRIDGES Prof. Luci Attala titled ‘The Creative Complications and Challenges of UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Transdisciplinary Research Method: Experiencing Dreaming as an Approach—My Story’. This chapter highlights alternative methodologies like dreaming and Indigenous knowledge systems, challenging traditional academic hierarchies and advocates for genuine, equitable co-design that reconfigures how we understand human-environment relationships.