Keynote speakers
Frans Berkhout
Frans Berkhout is Professor of Environment, Society and Climate in the Department of Geography at King’s College London, and Interim Director of the Future Earth programme, based at the International Council for Science (ICSU) in Paris. Between 2004 and 2012, he was director of the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the VU University Amsterdam in The Netherlands, and from 2010 to 2013 director of the Amsterdam Global Change Institute. Professor Berkhout is a lead author in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (2014) and a member of the Research Evaluation Framework (REF) of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). He sits on the editorial boards of Research Policy, Global Environmental Change, Journal of Industrial Ecology, Current Opinion on Environmental Sustainability and The Anthropocene Review. His early research examined economic, political and security aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle and radioactive waste management. His ongoing work explores science, technology, policy and sustainability, with a focus on climate change.
Melissa Leach
Melissa Leach is Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex. As a Professorial Fellow of IDS, she founded and directed the ESRC STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre (www.steps-centre.org) from 2006 - 2014, a global research-policy centre working with core partnerships in Africa, Asia and Latin America. A geographer and social anthropologist, her research in Africa and beyond has integrated social science with science-policy and natural sciences across many environmental, agricultural, health, technology and gender issues, with publications including the books Misreading the African Landscape (Cambridge, 1996); Reframing Deforestation (Routledge, 1998); Science, Society and Power (Cambridge, 2003); The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment (James Currey, 1996); Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social justice (2010, Earthscan), and Green Grabbing (2012, Taylor and Francis). Her contributions to shaping global agendas around sustainability and development include leading UN Women's 2014 World Survey Report on Gender Equality and Sustainable Development, and vice-chairing the Science Committee of Future Earth. She is an advisor to the ESRC-funded 'Nexus Network: New connections in food, energy, water and the environment' (http://thenexusnetwork.org.uk/).
Arild Vatn
Arild Vatn is professor at the Department of International Environment and Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). His main expertise is in institutional and ecological economics. Specific fields of experience are: a) Environmental governance and policy processes; b) Policy evaluations regarding environmental resources and pollution issues; c) Environmental valuation. Vatn has been president and vice president of the European Society of Ecological Economics. He enjoys also organizing PhD summer schools. He was awarded the NMBU research prize in 2002 and the joint EAEPE and AFEE Veblen 150 prize in 2007 for his book ‘Institutions and the Environment'. His new book, ‘Environmental Governance - Institutions, policies and actions', will appear late 2015.
Emily McKenzie
Emily McKenzie specializes in ecological economics and environmental policy. Her current research interests include the use of ecosystem service information in public and private sector decision-making, scenario development and organisations and institutions for environmental management. Emily manages the Natural Capital Project at WWF - a partnership with Stanford University, University of Minnesota and The Nature Conservancy. She leads the Project's work at the science-policy interface and valuing nature strategy at WWF.
Emily received a Master's degree in International Policy Studies from Stanford University and a Bachelor's degree Economics from Cambridge University.
Giorgos Kallis
Giorgos Kallis is Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and editor of "Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era" (Routledge, 2014). His research examines the social and bio-physical causes of environmental degradation. He is interested on the political-economic roots of environmental degradation and its uneven distribution along lines of power, income and class. His current research is motivated by the double global economic and ecological crisis and the hypothesis of sustainable de-growth: a smooth economic downscaling to a sustainable future where we can live better with less.
Dan O'Neill
Dan O¹Neill is a Lecturer in Ecological Economics at the University of Leeds, and the Chief Economist at the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE). His research focuses on the changes that would be needed to achieve a successful steady-state economy, and alternative ways of measuring progress besides GDP. He is co-author (with Rob Dietz) of Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources, which has recently been made into a short film. When he isn¹t doing research or teaching, Dan enjoys hiking in the Yorkshire Dales and singing songs about the misguided pursuit of economic Growth.
Inge Røpke
Inge Røpke is Professor of Ecological Economics at Aalborg University, Copenhagen. She trained as an economist and holds a PhD in social sciences. Røpke has written about the development of modern ecological economics, trade, economic growth and consumption. Most recently, Røpke has taken up ecological macroeconomics and the need for institutional change for a post-growth society.
Julie Nelson
Julie A. Nelson is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Senior Research Fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, USA. She is the author of Economics for Humans (2006) and many other books and articles which examine the relationship of economics to feminism, ecology, and ethics. Her articles have appeared in journals ranging from Econometrica and the Journal of Political Economy to Ecological Economics and Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy.
Kate Raworth
Kate Raworth is an economist focused on transforming economics to make it fit for addressing this century's realities and challenges. She is the creator of the doughnut of social and planetary boundaries, which since being first published by Oxfam in 2012, has gained widespread international recognition and influence in reframing sustainable development, including shaping the United Nations' post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. She is currently writing Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist, to be published by Random House. Kate is a senior visiting research associate and lecturer at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, and a senior associate of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Kate blogs about Doughnut Economics at www.kateraworth.com and tweets @KateRaworth.
Ronan Palmer
Ronan Palmer is Chief Economist to the English Environment Agency. His role goes across the wide range of the Agency's business, from flood risk management to water resources, from industry regulation to climate change adaptation. He joined the Environment Agency shortly after it was established in 1996. Previously he had been a regulatory economist at the newly privatised National Grid Company and worked in the UK's Department of Environment on water privatisation and policy appraisal. He has a degree in Philosophy and Economics from University College Dublin.
From 2013 to 2015 Ronan is sharing his time with Ofwat, on assignment as their Environment Director, and leading their strategy development.
Sigrid Stagl
Sigrid Stagl is an economist and full professor at WU in Vienna. Currently she works on (1) institutional arrangement that foster sustainable work, (2) developing socio-economic theories of human behaviour and (3) the effects of financialisation on the Environment. Her PhD in the field of Ecological Economics was awarded by RPI in Troy, New York. Before returning to Vienna she worked at the Universities of Leeds and Sussex. From 2003 to 2009 she served as Vice-President of the ESEE and from 2009 to 2012 as President. At WU she is currently the Head of the Institute of Ecological Economics, Deputy Chair of the Department of Socio-Economics and Programme Director of the MSc Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy.
Andy Mace
Andy Mace delivers sustainable solutions which benefit communities, the environment and his clients. As Arup's team leader for environment and sustainability in Scotland and the North East, Andy spearheads projects which have a measurable impact, both in terms of sustainability and his clients' outcomes. He strives to gain a firm grasp of his clients' needs, and is a confident leader who is able to get teams of many different skills working together on forward-thinking projects. Andy's first project at Arup was the award-winning Beddington Zero Energy Development, which devised strong engineering solutions to everyday issues of carbon, consumption and design. He got his start as a mechanical building services engineer, and is able to identify practical approaches that will translate sustainable principles into real improvements for a project. He has delivered projects for international and local masterplans, zero-carbon homes, heat networks, strategic infrastructure and climate change assessments. His expertise includes masterplanning, environmental assessment and zero-carbon development. He is a keen hill-walker and is a member of the Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue Team.
Gill Seyfang
Gill Seyfang is Reader in Sustainable Consumption and founding member of the 3S (Science, Society and Sustainability) Research Group at the University of East Anglia. She is an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist, linking sustainability policy agendas with ‘new economics' theories and cutting-edge community-based practice. Her recent research on grassroots innovations for sustainability has focused on community energy, community currencies, local food systems, Transition Towns, ethical banking, collaborative consumption and the sharing economy. She is the author of The New Economics of Sustainable Consumption (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and in 2014 was awarded an Excellence in Teaching prize for her innovative use of comedy improvisation to engage students in environmental social science.
Paul Ellis
Paul Ellis is the CEO of Ecology Building Society, one of the UK's leading ethical finance providers. The Ecology supports the creation of a sustainable housing stock through its award-winning C-Change mortgage facilities. He is currently the longest serving CEO in the building society movement, and is a member of the national council of the UK Building Societies Association. Paul is also a director of the International Association of Investors in the Social Economy (INAISE) which promotes the growth of social and solidarity finance globally, and represents the Society in the Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV). Paul holds a Masters degree from the LSE. In his dwindling spare time he is active in his local community and woodland conservation, and has created his own 5 acre woodland.
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