Place, Memory, and environmental Psychology (OOL)
Osher Online | Registration opens Tuesday, February 3, 2026 10:00 AM
How much of who we are is shaped by the places we live and experience? This course invites reflection on the psychological and emotional relationships between people and their environments. Drawing on psychology, geography, architecture, and design, we will explore environmental psychology and how physical environments shape behavior, cognition, identity, and memory. Using place-based methods, we will discuss concepts such as place attachment, identity, and cognitive maps. We will reflect on memory, home, trauma, displacement, and nature’s role in well-being.
TUESDAYS, APRIL 7 THROUGH MAY 12 - Each live session (via Zoom) is 90 minutes
Tuesday, April 7
Tuesday, April 14
Tuesday, April 21
Tuesday, April 28
Tuesday, May 5
Tuesday, May 12
Class schedule: Live lectures will take place via ZOOM
As this class is delivered by the National Resource Center for OLLIs (NRC) at Northwestern University, you will receive a welcome email from osheronline@northwestern.edu. The email will include your credentials (username & password) as well as a hyperlink to the Osher Online Website through which you will access your course website. Please save the link once you receive it. Multi-session courses will use this same link each week.
Fernanda Blanco Vidal
Fernanda Blanco Vidal is a PhD Candidate in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She holds degrees in Psychology and Sociology from the Federal University of Bahia, where she published Nostalgia, but not Sadness – Psychology, Memory and Forced Displacement. Her dissertation explores how people’s sense of place shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic. With over a decade of higher education experience in Brazil and the US, she develops placebased methodologies linking psychology, memory, and displacement.