Reimagining the Law of the Forest explores human-forest relationships of rights and responsibility at a time of political awakening to the place of English woodlands in the public consciousness. It comes in the year of the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest, and in the wake of an abandoned government proposal to privatise the entire Public Forest Estate and a subsequent independent public consultation on the future of English woodlands. The consultation advocated the development of a new 'woodland culture', framed in terms of market-based incentives for private landowners to provide ecosystem services; while the original proposal to privatise revealed how little legal protection there is for English public forests at present. The project aims to deepen and re-evaluate our understanding of human-forest relations for two main reasons. First, in the context of national and international priorities on sustainable development the project seeks to draw lessons from legal history and philosophy to contribute towards shaping the future design of forest law and policy for long-term environmental sustainability. It will provide the knowledge to improve the legal protection that forests and woodlands lack. Second, it aims to increase public awareness of the intrinsic and extrinsic value of forests as biodiverse natural habitats that are also rich in resources, cultural and social significance, and essential for the stability of the Earth's climate. The project findings will contribute to the new woodland culture that the public consultation said was needed, and to ensuring that this culture is based on legal protection and shared cultural values towards forests and woodlands. The project will analyse the history of human-forest relations in English law and society over the centuries, which has been characterised by shifts in power and property relations that have driven plunder more than preservation. Today, forests in England represent only around 10% of total land area, compared with 15% 1,000 years ago, and a current European average of 37% (Forestry Commission statistics 2014). Through archival and empirical research, the project will explore the historical basis of human-forest relations in England, the cultural, legal and social factors that have led to the contemporary moral crisis over public forests and woodlands, and the tension between the extent of human needs and rights to exploit forests and our responsibilities to protect them. The project also re-evaluates our relationship with forests drawing upon an emergent area in legal theory known as Wild Law, or Earth Jurisprudence. These ecocentric approaches see nature as an object of human responsibility and hold the potential for synergy between the public rejection of privatisation of the Public Forest Estate and market-based approaches to environmental governance. They have been most influential at an international level in UN General Assembly debates on the Sustainable Development Goals and can be applied practically, in the context of climate change, environmental stewardship, the protection of indigenous peoples' rights, and rethinking property regimes. However, as an emergent area of study, little of this research has focused on Europe, or England and the UK. The project is unique in its interdisciplinary approach to exploring human-forest relations in the context of culture, law and society throughout English history, and the educational and policy potential this offers. Beyond academia, the outcomes of this project will be of interest to policymakers, third sector forest and woodland conservation organisations, forest education institutions, landowners of private woodlands and the general public.