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Ecoliteracy: First principles for radical change, Teachers
Fritjof Capra physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley. He is the author of several international bestsellers, including The Tao of Physics, The Web of Life, and The Hidden Connections. His latest book, The Science of Leonardo, was published in 2007 by Doubleday in the U.S. and by Rizzoli in Italy.
Gustavo Esteva is an independent writer, a grassroots activist and a “deprofessionalized intellectual”. He was invited by the Zapatistas in Mexico to be their adviser in 1996. Since then, he has been very active in what today is called Zapatismo.
Satish Kumar undertook an 8,000 mile peace pilgrimage, walking from India to America without any money to deliver packets of peace tea to leaders of the four nuclear powers. In 1973, he settled in England, becoming editor of Resurgence magazine – a position he has held ever since. Satish is the guiding spirit behind a number of ecological, spiritual and educational ventures in Britain and was one of the founders of Schumacher College. Read more
Stephan Harding is Programme Coordinator of the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College. He is a close associate of James Lovelock and an expert in the study of Gaia theory and deep ecology. He is the author of Animate Earth. Read more
Emily Ryan (course facilitator) is a facilitator and event producer, specializing in the design and facilitation of unique learning environments in the fields of transformational education and sustainability. For more than fifteen years, Emily has committed herself to social and environmental justice through her engaging approach to education and strategic alliance building. She is privileged to work closely with inspiring mentors and key leaders in this field including: Joanna Macy, Julia Butterfly Hill, Fritjof Capra, Jacob Needleman, and Richard Olivier. Emily is a graduate of the MSc Holistic Science, Schumacher College, and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Anne Miller is an authority on creativity and innovation, with an infectious enthusiasm for ideas, and the expertise to help make them reality. She started her career with an MA in Engineering from Cambridge University, then spent 20 years leading teams developing innovative products for the world’s leading companies. She is one of the world’s most prolific female inventors, with 39 patents for a diverse range of products. Her inventions range from power tools and medical products to the manufacturing system for the Femidom (the female condom). She is also author of How to get your ideas adopted (and change the world).
In 1988 she was a co-founder of The Technology Partnership (now one of Europe’s leading technology innovation organizations) and in 2000 founded The Creativity Partnership, providing consulting and training for some of the world’s most successful organizations. She is also a board member of Stop Climate Chaos, a coalition of over 60 of the UK’s leading non-government organizations demanding action on climate change. Website: www.tcp-uk.co.uk
Philip Franses is part of the MSc in Holistic Science Faculty at Schumacher College as teacher of complexity. Philip studied mathematics at New College Oxford from 1976 to 1980. Academia’s dull explanation of the world inspired Philip on a counter-journey into the depths of experience, travelling and a re-sensitisation to quality. In 2005, after a fifteen-year career designing intelligent software, culminating in a programme now used in The Netherlands by all Dutch courts, Philip had a chance encounter with Satish Kumar and was moved to come to Schumacher as an MSc student. Here he was especially inspired by the work and scientific approaches of Goethean scientist Henri Bortoft, the physicist Basil Hiley and the late Brian Goodwin, professor of biology. Philip now runs local workshops in Goethean science, offering people a foundation to a “whole way” of seeing the world; and with Basil, Philip began the forum Process and Pilgrimage, inaugurated in 2009 at Birkbeck College. From 2006 Philip worked with Brian on a computer model exploring the interpretation of meaning within the DNA code. Taking up Brian’s work on complexity and chaos theory has also led to an exciting partnership with Aboca herbal health company, restoring the whole herb as the qualitative source of health.
Terry Irwin is a designer and design educator. Trained as a graphic designer, Terry received her MFA from the Basel School of Design, Switzerland and worked for many years as a senior designer and brand consultant for large corporations. She was a partner/creative director in the San Francisco office of MetaDesign, an international design firm with offices in London, Berlin and Zurich.
Since 1986 Terry has taught design at the University level at Otis Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles and from 1989 – 2003 at California College of Arts and Crafts. She has lectured and guest-taught at a variety of schools and Universities in North America and Europe, including Rhode Island School of Design, Virginia Commonwealth University, Art Center School of Design, ICIS, Denmark and Bolzen-Bolzano, Italy. In 2003 Terry moved to the UK to do a masters degree in Holistic Science at Schumacher College as the basis for transforming both her design and teaching practices to be more sustainable. Since then, Terry has been lecturer in the graduate programme for design at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design at the University of Dundee and is a PhD researcher in their Centre for the Study of Natural Design.
Terry is currently Head of the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon, a private research university in Pittsburgh with a distinctive mix of programs and campuses across the globe.
Terry’s work focuses on how to develop more responsible and appropriate design processes and methodologies for traditionally trained designers and investigates the components of a holistic worldview and its implications for design.
Toni Spencer has been leading on the innovative Schumacher Certificate in Education For Sustainability, designing, facilitating and teaching on the course using a wide variety of facilitation techniques and approaches. Alongside this she is a freelance facilitator elsewhere including Embercombe and Transition Town Totnes. She is also engaged in a re-emerging art practice and a growing practice as a wild food forager and teacher.
She holds a BA in Fine Art and a MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice. Previous professional work has been with organisations including Goldsmiths, Forum For the Future, Social Venture Network, Attainable Utopias, Wallpaper* Magazine and Wink Media.
Toni’s facilitation and coaching practice is fed by professional experience and personal interest in fields of Art and Eco Design, embodiment practices, The Work That Reconnects, Deep Ecology, participative democracy, ecopsycology, Permaculture and new social ventures.
Julie Richardson is the Head of Economics at Schumacher College. Julie has over 20 years international experience working across a range of sectors and organisations covering different aspects of sustainable development. She has worked as a senior environmental policy advisor to the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and as Principal Sustainability Officer for Jonathon Porritt’s Forum for the Future. Here her work included advising the business sector on how to incorporate sustainability issues into their corporate strategy including measuring and reporting their wider social and environmental impacts.
In 2005, Julie was awarded an MSc in Holistic Science (with distinction) at Schumacher College and since then has undertaken a range of projects to show how new thinking in science can be applied to sustainable development. This includes a report for the Design Council on sustainable design in the UK and a scoping study on how holistic science can inform environmental policy making for the Environment Agency. The new Landscope project at Dartington arose out of this work.
Julie has published widely, including her most recent co-authored book, The Triple Bottom Line: Does It All Add Up? The book highlights a fresh approach to organisational performance that takes account of environmental, social and economic impacts.
Gill Wyatt has worked as a psychotherapist for over 20 years. She has published three edited books in the field of counselling and psychotherapy and managed postgraduate and under-graduate courses. Currently she is setting up a new venture, Creating Synergies, a consulting/facilitating service for groups, organisations and communities, which helps them shift their functioning to a higher level of organisation through creative emergence.
Jon Rae is Director Sustainability in Practice at Dartington. Jon is a member of the senior management team at Dartington Schumacher College co-ordinating sustainability on the Dartington Estate and developing a new partnership outreach service to accelerating transition to an equitable low carbon economy through support for change agents across sectors
Jon is a geographer and social anthropologist with 15 years working nationally and internationally in community empowerment, economic development and habitat conservation. He has also held lecturing posts in higher education, Former roles include fellow with the Consultative Group in Agricultural Research based in Syria, a variety of roles with the Sustainable Development Division of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, United Nations and a short stint with the World Bank on convening environmental scientists across the Middle East Peace process.
Jon has worked on disaster relief with Save the Children and had roles with a variety of other local and international NGOs. Before coming to Dartington he led the development and implementation of the £2.3m rural development and climate change ‘Purbeck Keystone’ programme. Jon is now Chair of the Torbay Culture and Environment Partnership and Trustee to the Quarry and Sculpture Trust. He has contributed chapters to 5 books as well as articles to a range of journals.
Jon has Doctorate in Geography and Anthropology from University of Oxford, a Masters in Environmental Management from Stirling University and a BSc in Business Finance and Economics from George Mason University, Virginia.
Mark Burton is a graduate of the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College and is now applying his learning to developing economic models and systems which are ecologically sound and socially just. He is a leading activist and thinker in creating new money systems as a key structural requirement of the new economy and is on a PhD programme at University of Liverpool doing an action research project into developing and implementing these systems in practice.
Bethan Stagg co-ordinates the garden operations and teaching on the Certificate in Sustainable Horticulture, a one-year course being run through Schumacher College in partnership with Duchy College. Bethan has had a passion for plants since the age of six, when she started learning the names of plants in the garden and local wasteland. Bethan has a BSc in biology from University of Bristol and an MSc in Biodiversity and Conservation from the University of Leeds and has worked in a variety of roles relating to ecology and local food initiatives, including allotment regeneration and farmers markets. As well as working part-time at Schumacher Bethan works at University of Plymouth teaching environmental surveying to student and community groups for a national project called Open Air Laboratories.
Teachers on previous Ecoliteracy courses:
Oliver Greenfield leads the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) in the work of Sustainable Business and Economics. Specifically, he leads efforts on One Planet Vision, One Planet Economy, One Planet Finance, and One Planet Business. He also leads the change projects for a variety of business partnerships in these areas.
Martin Crawford runs the Agroforestry Research Trust. He has over 20 years’ experience of Organic horticulture, agriculture and agroforestry. The Agroforestry Research Trust is a non-profit making charity which researches into temperate agroforestry and into all aspects of plant cropping and uses, with a focus on tree, shrub and perennial crops.
Jonathan Crinion is the founder of Crinion Associates Ltd., an international Ecological – Research, Planning and Design consulting firm established in 1986. The company specialises in the synthesis of complex systems and has won many international awards for projects ranging from vertical axis wind turbines to conceiving the original famous 6 metre ‘Open Table’ concept, which revolutionised the office work environment globally and is produced by Knoll International. In 2006 he created a sailing project with ‘Friends of the Earth’ to promote the ‘The Big Ask’ campaign to legislate for CO2 reduction in the UK. Crinion’s current work uses an Earth systems science perspective to research ‘The Automorphosis of Social Ecological Organisational Systems’ and he continues to explore and lecture about ‘Flow: A Social Ecological Approach’. Crinion is currently a Visiting Lecturer at
Schumacher College for the MSc in Holistic Science.
Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity (company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.