Fellows

Schumacher College Fellows are academics, writers, thinkers and activists who through their deep connection with the College over many years have shared their passion for embodying the core values of the College’s mission.

College Fellows are integral members of our global learning community and continue to act as ambassadors, teachers and activists in support of the values and vision at the heart of Schumacher College.

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Fellows

Fritjof Capra

Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California.

The Center advances schooling for sustainability; its recent book on this growing movement in K-12 schools is Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability (2009). Dr. Capra is on the faculty of the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program of the University of California, Berkeley. He also teaches at Schumacher College, an international center for ecological studies in England, and frequently gives management seminars for top executives.

Dr. Capra is the author of several international bestsellers, including The Tao of Physics (1975), The Web of Life (1996), The Hidden Connections (2002) and The Science of Leonardo (2007). He coauthored Green Politics (1984), Belonging to the Universe (1991), and EcoManagement (1993), and coedited Steering Business Toward Sustainability (1995). His most recent book, Learning from Leonardo, was published in Italy and Brazil in 2012 and will be published in the United States in 2013. He is currently working on a multidisciplinary textbook, The Systems View of Life, coauthored by Pier Luigi Luisi and to be published by Cambridge University Press. Please see the bibliography for full details about publications.

Jonathan Dawson

Jonathan Dawson is a Regenerative Economics Fellow. For many years he was Programme Coordinator and Senior Lecturer for our Regenerative Economics 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.

Dr Stephan Harding

stephan.harding@schumachercollege.org.uk

Stephan is a Deep Ecology Research Fellow and has been teaching on the MSC Holistic Science programme since its inception in 1998.

Stephan holds a doctorate in behavioural ecology from the University of Oxford. He has been involved in ecological field research in Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Costa Rica, where he was Visiting Professor in Wildlife Management at the National University.

In 1990 Stephan became one of the founding members of Schumacher College where he worked closely with James Lovelock, with whom he has maintained a long-lasting friendship and scientific collaboration. As a result of this, they were jointly appointed as founding chair holders of the Arne Naess Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo.

Stephan led and lectured on the college’s MSc Holistic Science for nearly two decades, teaching on the core models of the programme, as well as on several short courses at the College. At Schumacher College Stephan has taught alongside many of the world’s leading ecological thinkers and activists, including Arne Naess, Fritjof Capra, Brian Goodwin, Vandana Shiva, David Abram, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. He is now Deep Ecology Research Fellow at Schumacher College, where his interests are the intersects between scientific ecology (especially Gaia theory) and the world of psyche and soul.

He plays classical guitar and the Venezuelan cuatro and loves to speak Spanish, his native tongue.
Stephan is author of Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia, as well as Gaia Alchemy and Poems of Lorca: Courting the Dawn, translated with Martin Shaw.

Polly Higgins

Polly was a student and teacher at Schumacher College, and led a decade-long campaign for 'ecocide' to be recognised as a crime against humanity.

Polly was a barrister, author and creator of new laws to protect the Earth. She spoke on all aspects of governance required for the new world, a world governed by a new set of values – values that put people and planet over profit.

Satish Kumar, College co-founder, said of Polly: "Polly was a great dreamer. Her dream was to see the whole world recognise the sanctity of the earth and live in harmony with her. She was also a warrior. She was fighting to make the destruction of land, devastation of forests, pollution of oceans and contamination of atmosphere a crime against nature. In her view ecocide is as serious a crime as genocide.

"She was a lawyer by profession. But instead of working for her personal success she devoted her entire life in the service of the earth. The earth herself was Polly’s client and she worked day and night defending the rights of nature. There are thousands of lawyers defending human rights but Polly was one of the few who made unconditional commitment to defend the rights of the earth."

In 2019, Polly passed away from cancer, aged 50. She is greatly missed and we hope, above all, that her work will go from strength to strength and perhaps, when we look back, have taken a pivotal role in the great change that our times so badly require and that she worked so tirelessly for.

Satish Kumar

Satish is Visiting Fellow and was the originator and cofounder of Schumacher College.

He served as its program director from 1991 to 2010, and was also the primary fundraiser during that time.

A former monk and long-term peace and environment activist, Satish has been quietly setting the Global Agenda for change for over 50 years. He was just nine when he left his family home to join the wandering Jains and 18 when he decided he could achieve more back in the world, campaigning for land reform in India and working to turn Gandhi’s vision of a renewed and a peaceful world into reality.

In 1973 Satish settled in the United Kingdom taking up the post of editor of Resurgence magazine, a position he has held ever since, making him the UK’s longest-serving editor of the same magazine. During this time, he has been the guiding spirit behind a number of now internationally respected ecological and educational ventures including Schumacher College.

Jonathon Porritt

Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder of Forum for the Future, is a ‘veteran campaigner’ and eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development.

He is also a Non-Executive Director of Willmot Dixon Holdings, Chancellor of Keele University, and is involved in the work of many NGOs and charities as Patron, Chair or Special Advisor. See Affiliations.

He was formerly Director of Friends of the Earth (1984-90); co-chair of the Green Party (1980-83) of which he is still a member; a Trustee of WWF-UK (1991-2005) and a member of the Board of the South West Regional Development Agency (1999-2008).

He stood down as Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission in July 2009 after nine years of providing high-level advice to Government Ministers.

His new book, ‘Hope in Hell’, was published in June 2020. His recent books are ‘The World We Made’ (2013), ‘Capitalism As If The World Matters’ (Earthscan, revised 2007), ‘Globalism & Regionalism’ (Black Dog 2008) and ‘Living Within Our Means’ (Forum for the Future 2009).

Jonathon received a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.

jonathonporritt.com

Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva is a world renowned champion of earth democracy, sustainable agriculture and an ecological world view.

Vandana combines science with spiritual values. She is a tireless campaigner against industrial agriculture, genetic engineering of seeds and the modern economy destructive of ecological harmony.

She is an author of more than 20 books including Biopiracy: the Plunder of Nature and Knowledge and Water Wars; Privatization, Pollution, and Profit.

She is one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization, (along with Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin), and a figure of the global solidarity movement known as the alter-globalization movement. She has argued for the wisdom of many traditional practices, and founded Navdanya (“nine seeds”), a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds.

Vandana set up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in her mother’s cowshed in 1997. Its studies have validated the ecological value of traditional farming and been instrumental in fighting destructive development projects in India . She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, and was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1993.