Kate Raworth is a renegade economist focused on exploring the economic mindset needed to address the 21st century’s social and ecological challenges, and is the creator of the Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries.  She is a Senior Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, where she teaches on the Masters in Environmental Change and Management. She is also a Senior Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.  Her internationally acclaimed idea of Doughnut Economics has been widely influential amongst sustainable development thinkers, progressive businesses and political activists, and she has presented it to audiences ranging from the UN General Assembly to the Occupy movement. Her book, Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist is being published in the UK and US in April 2017 and translated into Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Japanese.  Over the past 20 years, Kate’s career has taken her from working with micro-entrepreneurs in the villages of Zanzibar to co-authoring the Human Development Report for UNDP in New York, followed by a decade as Senior Researcher at Oxfam.

Rob Hopkins is co-founder of Transition Town Totnes and the Transition Network. He has many years’ experience in education, teaching permaculture and natural building, and set up the first 2-year full-time permaculture course in the world in Kinsale, Ireland, which was also the first community to develop an Energy Descent Action Plan. Futhermore, Rob set up the Hollies Centre for Practical Sustainability in Ireland. He is author of The Transition Handbook and The Transition Companion, and publishes www.transitionculture.org, recently voted the 4th best green blog in the UK.

Tom Crompton has worked on values and social change for nearly a decade, initially with WWF’s, whose work whose work in this area, Common Cause, started in 2008 with the publication of Tom’s report Weathercocks and Signposts. Currently, Tom is engaged in a productive collaboration involving WWF and Scope that is allowing them to test many of the principles advanced through Common Cause. Tom is now coordinating the establishment of The Common Cause Foundation.  His other publications include Meeting Environmental Challenges (co-authored with Tim Kasser).

Jonathan Dawson is a sustainability educator, currently working as coordinator of Schumacher College’s innovative Economics for Transition postgraduate programme. He has a deep fascination with the power of narrative and language to shape how we understand the world and as a potential source of radical change in the norms, values and behaviours of our societies.  Until recently a long-term resident at the Findhorn ecovillage and a former President of the Global Ecovillage Network, he has around 20 years’ experience as a researcher, author, consultant and project manager in the field of small enterprise development in Africa and South Asia. Jonathan is the principal author of the Gaia Education sustainable economy curriculum, drawn from best practice within ecovillages worldwide, that has been endorsed by UNITAR and adopted by UNESCO as a valuable contribution to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. He has taught this curriculum at universities, ecovillages and community centres in Brazil, Spain and Scotland.

Manda Scott is a novelist, columnist, blogger, leftwing activist and screenwriter.  Formerly a veterinary surgeon, her first novel was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and her fourth nominated for an Edgar Award.  She began writing contemporary crime novels, shifted to historical fiction with the Boudica: Dreaming tetralogy and the ROME series of ancient world spy thrillers. These days she writes complex, interwoven dual time line thrillers exploring, amongst other things, the truth behind the mythology of Jeanne d’Arc and the origins of the CIA.   In 2017, she took a break and became a student again on the Economics for Transition post-graduate degree at Schumacher. Her dissertation explores the neurophysiology of narrative and her aim now is to find ways to shift and shape the world’s narrative to one that will make us who we need to be.

Chris Rapley CBE is Professor of Climate Science at University College London. He is a Fellow of St Edmund's College Cambridge, a member of the Academia Europaea, a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Chairman of the London Climate Change Partnership. His previous posts include Director of the Science Museum London, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, President of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and Head of UCL's Earth Observation satellite group.

His current interests are in the role of climate scientists in society and the communication of climate science. He is Chair of the UCL Commission on Communicating Climate Science.  Prof Rapley was awarded the 2008 Edinburgh Science Medal for having made 'a significant contribution to the understanding and wellbeing of humanity'.  His recent venture in communicating climate change via theatrical performance was awarded five stars by the Guardian’s Micheal Billington and described as ‘….better than good: it is necessary’.

Robin has been a researcher, journalist and communicator in the environmental sector for fifteen years, and on climate change specifically for the last decade. She first became interested in how we talk and think about climate change - and the disconnect that often exists between the political debate around climate and the conversations held elsewhere - whilst working as a climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth. Robin subsequently helped start up the climate science and energy blog , where she spent several years disentangling the intricacies of climate policy for a wider audience. She most recently worked as a researcher for the European Climate Foundation, and over the course of her career she has advised a large number of grassroots NGOs, universities and campaign organisations, writing extensively about food sustainability, the global energy system and climate impacts amongst other issues.