UM’s sustainability champions

Academic year 2025-26

Prof. Patricia Vella de Fremeaux
I am Professor and Head of the Department of International Law within the Faculty of Laws at the University of Malta. My academic background is in public international law, with a focus on the law of the sea, maritime security, maritime migration and the human dimension of international law. My teaching and research roles engage with issues of governance, responsibility and sustainability in international contexts.

I view sustainability as a practical responsibility that should be integrated into everyday academic practice and institutional decision-making. Within the university context, this includes the responsible use of space, awareness of how decisions taken affect the campus environment and the promotion of calm, inclusive and human-centred spaces that support well-being alongside environmental awareness. I believe sustainability measures are most effective when they are realistic, visible and embedded in the campus environment.

I am involved in the Greening on Campus initiative at the University of Malta. My interest lies in improving the use of campus spaces to increase greenery, provide shade and create calmer environments for staff and students. This reflects a practical approach to sustainability that links environmental awareness with well-being and everyday use of the campus.

Dr Lorraine Portelli
I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Health, Physical Education and Consumer Studies within the Faculty of Education. My areas of expertise include fashion, textiles, and interiors.

I am a strong advocate of sustainability, particularly in the fashion sector. My guiding principle is to advocate for responsible consumption practices, encouraging individuals to reduce unnecessary purchasing and prioritise durable, high-quality garments. I encourage mindful shopping practices, including checking care labels carefully, paying particular attention to fibre composition and washing instructions. I encourage the development of capsule wardrobes as a strategy to support sustainable consumption patterns. This approach also emphasises the importance of ensuring that each purchase is genuinely needed.

Over the past six years, I have led an annual ethical fashion campaign in collaboration with my students. The initiative seeks to promote sustainable consumption by encouraging students, staff, and members of the wider community to extend the lifespan of their clothing rather than contribute to textile waste. Through this campaign, students provide accessible repair and upcycling services, offering practical and sustainable alternatives to textile disposal and fast-fashion consumption. The initiative simultaneously cultivates students’ creative design capabilities and problem-solving skills while reinforcing sustainability principles. Activities organised within this campaign have included repair and mending workshops, clothing exchange initiatives, and the establishment of thrift shop events. The campaign has also been promoted through participation in the European Week for Waste Reduction on two occasions.

Prof. Inġ. Daniel Micallef
I am a Mechanical Engineer by profession and a resident academic at the Faculty for the Built Environment. I currently serve as Head of the department of Environmental Design. My research interests include wind engineering, wind energy, building physics and applied fluid mechanics.

I strongly believe that our academic work and research should contribute to sustainability in a holistic manner, starting from day-to-day practices in the lab to the development of ideas that target sustainability in its broad sense. While the local context remains high in priority, our research should be scalable and replicable in various contexts in order to ensure maximum impact.

I have worked on various funded projects that relate to sustainability including local initiatives such as HYPER and APACHE that target building and urban scale sustainability respectively. These projects were highly scientific and provided new insights on sustainable approaches within the built environment. In addition, I have collaborated with European consortia on projects such as VARCITIES and JUSTNature where we carried out monitoring and evaluation of sustainable practices.

Dr Claire Copperstone and Prof. Suzanne Piscopo

Dr Claire Copperstone - a senior lecturer within the Dept of Food Science, Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Health Sciences. Her academic background is in Human Nutrition and is a registered nutritionist (local and UK). Her professional interest in sustainability initiatives include research on food security, food systems approaches and underutilised crops and sustainability education in health professionals.

Prof. Suzanne Piscopo - a Professor with the Dept. of Health, Physical Education and Consumer Studies, Faculty of Education. Her academic background is in education with a focus on food, nutrition, health and sustainable consumption. She is a Registered Nutritionist (UK) and has been involved in research, interventions and communications projects around healthy, sustainable diets and particularly the Mediterranean Diet. Suzanne believes strongly in the universal right to healthy and culturally acceptable food, built on sustainable food systems.

Sustainability statement: Food systems are currently very vulnerable and changes need to be made to ensure planetary, and thus human, health now and also for the future generations. We have a responsibility to educate and guide on the way forward for the establishment of healthy, but also sustainable and just food systems and diets so as to ensure there is enough nutritious and safe food for all, accessible by everyone, without negative long-term effects on the environment.

Methods to develop and launch a food sustainability communication campaign with a focus on food and nutrition, and with the main aims of increasing awareness amongst the UM population. A series of simple infographics is proposed, for example, issued once monthly running from March/April to end of year 2026. Nine infographics will be developed, all linked to food and nutrition sustainability key concepts. These can be developed by the academics themselves or even students at a later stage. The main message running through will be: Make SMALL changes for a BIG sustainable impact.

Dr Jane Spiteri
I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Early Childhood and Primary Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Malta, working at the intersection of early childhood education and sustainability. My research focuses on a question that is becoming increasingly urgent: how do young children understand and emotionally experience climate change, and how can education support them to respond with resilience, agency and hope?

Children are often portrayed as passive victims of the environmental crisis. I see them as capable participants in shaping more sustainable futures. My work draws on developmental psychology, environmental education, and sustainability studies to explore how sustainability and climate change enter children’s worlds, from their conversations and play to their worries and imaginings about the future. At its heart, my work is about ensuring that the young children are not invisible in sustainability and climate discourse.

Sustainability is not only about reducing carbon footprints. It is about cultivating future-oriented responsibility and collective resilience. Moreover, sustainability is not a subject to be taught in isolation. Rather, it is a way of thinking and acting that should shape university life as a whole. Universities have both influence and responsibility. We prepare future educators, professionals, researchers and decision-makers, and with that comes an obligation to model the change we wish to see.

In my teaching, I integrate sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals across early childhood and teacher education programmes. I encourage student teachers to engage critically with climate issues, but also to reflect on the emotional dimensions, fear, uncertainty, and hope that often accompany them. If we ignore the emotional aspect of climate change, we risk disengagement; if we address it thoughtfully, we open space for empowerment.

I also promote interdisciplinary dialogue across faculties, as sustainability challenges do not respect disciplinary boundaries. I believe we must move beyond seeing climate change as purely scientific or technical and recognise its ethical, social and psychological dimensions.

A central project I am currently developing is about climate emotions in early childhood. It investigates how children aged 3–11 perceive climate change, how it shapes their emotional worlds, and how educational environments can transform anxiety into constructive engagement. The project aims to conduct research with young children as co-researchers to nurture their agency and cultivate ethical responsibility and hope rather than fear. This project demonstrates how the University of Malta is not only responding to the climate crisis academically but is actively shaping educational practice on the ground.

Through research, teacher education, and public engagement, I aim to position sustainability not as a distant global agenda, but as something lived, felt and enacted in everyday educational spaces, beginning in early childhood.

Prof. Anna Khakee
My name is Anna Khakee and I am an Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Arts. It is not easy to live fully sustainably in our society, but I eat locally sourced produce as much as possible. I am a flexitarian so my main diet is vegetarian but I also eat fish, poultry and meat from time to time. As I don't own a car, I rely on buses and the ferry services. What I struggle most with is sustainable travel - I wish there would be a ferry to mainland Italy allowing me to connect to the fast and efficient (and comfortable!) Italian train grid. Currently, I am active in the Greening of Campus working group and a member of the Committee for Sustainability at the University of Malta (C-SUM).

Academic year 2024-25