The natural world is the foundation of our wellbeing, health, and capacity to flourish. At the Wellbeing in Nature hub, we conduct research that aims to understand our place in nature and how the natural world benefits physical and mental health for diverse populations. We create and evaluate interventions to support wellbeing in nature and work with a range of bodies to bring about changes that benefit people and nature.
The promise of jobs and prosperity pulls people to cities, with half of the global population already living in urban areas. But urban life comes at a cost, with poverty, inadequate housing and transport, pollution, and environmental degradation making cities epicentres of poor physical and mental health.
On the other hand, widespread evidence shows that closer relationships with nature – how much we notice, think about, appreciate, spend time in, and interact with natural environments – can support wellbeing, health, and our capacity to flourish. Nature is vital for keeping us psychologically, emotionally, and physically happy.
At the Wellbeing in Nature (WiN) hub, we conduct world-leading interdisciplinary research that aims to understand our place in nature and how the natural world benefits physical and mental health. Using innovative tools and methods, our team of scientists from different disciplines aims to uncover how and why nature is good for us.
We bring unique academic identities, overlapping interests, and a common purpose to help connect people, animals, and nature. As part of the Research Centre for Better Living, we are a hub of dialogue, debate, learning, connection, and curiosity, and our subjects are local, global, and universal.
Through our work, we help people feel more connected to nature, develop capacities to care for plants and animals, create a shared sense of belonging in nature, and optimally experience the benefits of contact with nature. We strive to be a progressive site of activity, fostering inclusion and equality, and developing opportunities to support well-being while caring for the natural world.
We collaborate with many different partners and communities to ensure that that the work we conduct is useful, meaningful, and relevant, and to develop and evaluate interventions that help individuals and communities develop closer relationships with the natural world. We also have an established satellite hub based at Perdana University in Malaysia – the Centre for Wellbeing in Nature (WiN-MAS).
We are proud to work with a range of charitable, governmental, and industry bodies to make the case for the nature-people agenda and green social prescribing, as well as to affect tangible policy changes benefiting our place in the natural world. If you would like to work or study with us, make use of our research expertise, or find out more about what we do, please contact us at [email protected]
The Wellbeing in Nature research hub brings together experts from psychology, public health, ecology, and more to collaborate, share information, and jointly develop research goals. Together, we co-develop knowledge, skills, and expertise across disciplines in order to tackle critical challenges around the people-nature agenda.
We also have working partnerships with a range of non-academic stakeholders, partners, and external collaborators. These groups help shape our direction of travel, inform our research priorities, and ensure that our work remains connected to the world beyond academia. We are always keen to hear from stakeholders who may be interested in our research. If you're interested in developing a partnership with us, contact [email protected]
We are working on a range of applied projects that aim to better understand our relationships with the natural world and how nature can support health and wellbeing in diverse communities. Here are some examples of our ongoing research.
We have conducted ground-breaking work showing that spending time in nature promotes healthier body images. Using diverse research methods, we now have a strong body of evidence demonstrating that contact with the natural world promotes greater care for, respect, and love for the body, and that nature exposure shifts our attention on to everything that our bodies do for us, rather than what our bodies look like. Our Body Image in Nature Survey is a pioneering project examining the relationship between nature contact and body image in 65 countries.
Working with StoryLab, we have explored the use of extended reality technologies, including virtual reality, to simulate natural environments. Our research shows that brief simulations of nature can promote wellbeing, including for communities that have limited access to real natural environments. We have developed a suite of tools, including a 360° film and first-person film, that we have successfully shown to promote improved wellbeing.
We work to promote community wellbeing through exercise in nature, bringing together commercial and community partners, especially at our Writtle campus. Our initiatives include a regular Nordic walking group, a gym for those who dislike gyms, and (in conjunction with the Alzheimer’s Society), and walking football sessions for those with early-onset dementia. We were also instrumental in bringing a Beat the Street game to the wider Chelmsford and South Woodham Ferrers communities.
Through our research, we are developing a fuller picture of why nature is good for us. Using eye-tracking technology, we explore how different types of environment grab our attention and how this affects our attentional capacities. Our work is helping to identify characteristics of both natural and built environments that can promote attentional benefits, with important implications for urban planning and architectural design.
Our work promotes lives lived in harmony with nature and animals, thereby enhancing wellbeing, quality of life, and sustainable futures for nature as a whole. We consider how human-animal relationships can be improved and how communities can be better supported to take action that supports the natural world through climate action.
Building on the momentum of our research and drawing on our collective expertise, we are committed to engaging the public about the importance and benefits of nature. We regularly speak at science festivals across Europe and contribute to school enrichment programmes in the south-east of England.
Swami, V., Voracek, M., Furnham, A., Horne, G., Longhurst, P. and Tran, U. S. (2025) 'Is nature exposure in autistic adults associated with more positive body image?', Body Image, 52, 101854.
Czepczor-Bernat, K., Modrzejewska, J., Modrzejewska, A., Bieńkowska, I. and Swami, V. (2024) 'Does a nature walk improve state body appreciation in children?', Body Image, 49, 101707.
Doell, K. C., Todorova, B., Vlasceanu, M., Bak Coleman, J. B., Pronizius, E., Schumann, P., ... Gradidge, S., … Lutz, A. E. (2024) 'The International Climate Psychology Collaboration: Climate change-related data collected from 63 countries', Scientific Data, 11, 1066.
Swami, V. (2024) 'Associations between nature exposure and body image: A critical, narrative review of the evidence', Acta Psychologica, 248, 104355.
Swami, V., Graf, H., Biebl, S., Schmid, T., Siebenhandl, A., Willinger, D., Galeazzi, F. and Stieger, S. (2024) 'Exposure to simulated nature promotes positive body image irrespective of the presentation modality. A comparison of images, 2-dimensional film, and 360° immersive film, Body Image, 51, 101803.
Swami, V., White, M. P., Voracek, M., Tran, U. S., Aavik, T., Abdollahpour Ranjbar, H., Adebayo, S. O., Afhami, R., Ahmed, O., Aimé, A., ... Stieger, S. (2024) 'Connectedness to nature and exposure to natural environments: An examination of the measurement invariance of the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) and Nature Exposure Scale (NES) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups', Journal of Environmental Psychology, 99, 102432.
Vlasceanu, M., Doell, K. C., ... Gradidge, S., … Lutz, A. E. (2024) 'Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries', Science Advances, 10, eadj5778.
Czepczor-Bernat, K., Modrzejewska, J., Modrzejewska, S. and Swami, V. (2022) 'The impact of a woodland walk on state body appreciation in Polish women: A field experiment and an assessment of dispositional and environmental determinants', International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19, 14548.
Stieger, S., Aichinger, I. and Swami, V. (2022) 'The impact of nature exposure on body image and happiness: An experience sampling study', International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 32, pp. 870-884.
Swami, V., Robinson, C. and Furnham, A. (2022) 'Positive rational acceptance of body image threats mediates the relationship between nature exposure and body appreciation', Ecopsychology, 14, pp. 118-125.
Swami, V., Tran, U. S., Stieger, S. and Voracek, M. (2022) 'Developing a model linking self-reported nature exposure and positive body image: A study protocol for the Body Image in Nature Survey (BINS)', Body Image, 40, pp. 50-57.