Staff

Having taught and served as Dean for nearly 15 years at Vermont’s Sterling College, Pavel brings a depth of experience to Schumacher College’s unique approach to experiential learning. While pursuing research in ecologically-minded curriculum design and teaching courses in environmental philosophy, Pavel is also a passionate endurance and adventure runner. Over the past five years through a project called Climate Run, Pavel has covered hundreds of miles in the Arctic and subarctic on foot in order to bring attention to the connections between our bodies and the more-than-human world in the face of a rapidly changing climate.

Pavel holds a Ph.D. in English and is the author of many articles, chapters, and two books: Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest: Region, Heritage, and Environment in the Rural Northeast. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010; and This Vast Book of Nature: Writing the Landscape of New Hampshire's White Mountains, 1784-1911. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006. He is currently working on a book titled Resilience in the North: Adventure, Endurance, and the Limits of the Human, which threads together personal narrative and observation with environmental philosophy and reflections on what it means to be human.

In 2004 Melissa carried out research in Sri Lanka following the Tsunami for her MPhil in Sustainable Agriculture, where she explored elements influencing the resilience of smallholder farmers. The research looked at agroecological and psycho-social factors, finding that resilience of small farmers affected by the tsunami was boosted by both agroecological and social diversity and connections.

Inspired to work more locally towards a more sustainable food system Melissa trained in practical sustainable horticulture, and went on to work as part of a team to set up School Farm CSA, near Totnes, as well as working to support food growing and composting in schools across Devon. Melissa currently delivers the Practical Horticulture adult training at School Farm, and also runs a small herb, perennial vegetable and wildflower nursery based at the farm.

She has a profound respect for and interest in working with and learning from the land, and all plants and creatures. She lives on the edge of Dartmoor with her partner and, when she is not growing plants, enjoys exploring and meeting them in the wild.

Andy has doctorates in Ecology (Oxford University – studying patterns of distribution of mammals at the continental level) and in the Study of Religion (King Alfred’s College, Winchester – researching bardic performance within contemporary Druidry and radical environmental protest movements). Consequently, he is especially interested in the intersection between ecology and worldview or spirituality.

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He taught for many years as an Associate Lecturer in the Study of Religion at Bath Spa University and Oxford Brookes University (Research Methods, Issues in Contemporary Religion, Contemporary Paganism and Festivals in Religion and Culture). Andy is third supervisor for a PhD student at the University of Sydney, who is researching the experiences of participants at the Synthesis psilocybin retreat centre in the Netherlands.

Andy’s areas of expertise include neopaganism, shamanism, the new animism, and psychedelic spiritualities. His current research focuses on the proliferation of both scientific and religious interest in psychedelics, and the assumptions, sympathies and antipathies between the various discourses by which psychedelic experience is interpreted. Current papers include a study of the use of psychedelics within contemporary Druidry, an investigation of the purported ability of psychedelics to engender an ecological self, and a co-authored paper on the significance of the Green Man in contemporary alternative spiritualities. He is the author of Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom and a range of papers, many of which can be found at independent.academia.edu/AndyLetcher.

Mona has a background in craft and design. After doing an undergraduate degree in Craft and Material Culture at the University of Art, Tehran, Iran, she completed MDes and PhD in Design at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Her doctorate thesis is an exploration of the role of unmediated relationship with the environment in the evolution of human consciousness. Her aspiration is to reintroduce the embodied and relational qualities of craft practice into regenerative design processes, particularly in participatory approaches to Transition. 

Previously, Ruth was a senior lecturer in Ecological Design Thinking at Schumacher College, co-developing the innovative MA. She initiated and was Artistic Advisor to, Utopia 2016: A Year of Imagination and Possibility at Somerset House, the Courtauld Institute and Gallery and King’s College London. Ruth was Head of Communications at NEF (the New Economics Foundation) for almost a decade where she helped shape the narrative of new economics, and was a co-editor of Red Pepper from 2016-2019. She is a co-author of The New Materialism, covered by the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Financial Times.

Ruth’s research and arts practice focuses on the phenomenon of political agency, following Donna Haraway’s demand that we ‘stay with the trouble’. Ruth is firmly committed to broadening perception of the possible, and is a member of the Cambridge Commission on Scaling Sustainable Behaviour Change and the Rapid Transition Task Force.

Before moving to the UK Jay was based in Silicon Valley in the US as an entrepreneur and consultant in the ‘green business movement’. He holds an MBA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and a BA in Philosophy from San Jose State University. He’s also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.