Staff

Pavel has worked for more than two decades in higher education in America and has always been drawn to colleges and universities whose curriculum fully integrates learning with practice and thinking with embodiment.

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.

Nathan’s interdisciplinary background includes degrees at The Evergreen State College (B.S. Environmental Science), The University of Northern British Columbia (M.A. Geography) and Colegio de la Frontera Sur (PhD Ecology and Sustainable Development). Since 2008, he has worked in Mesoamerica on projects related to development-induced displacement, traditional agriculture and agroecology, and Indigenous revitalization. Much of his research and accompaniment work has taken place in the Maya-Achí territory of Guatemala, where ancestral farming practices, crop varieties, knowledge, and sustainable livelihoods are maintained amidst enormous obstacles. For his dissertation, Nathan examined the local agroecology movement, with a focus on Maya-Achí culture, development processes, education, and local perspectives of wellbeing.

In addition to teaching, he worked as a consultant for international organizations, including The Nature Conservancy, where he conducted research on regenerative soil management and its connection to socio-ecological resilience in Central America.

Nathan has said that he is eager to bring his experiences to Schumacher College to inspire students and relate the principles and values of Indigenous agroecology to the UK context. He is also excited to put into practice his background and commitment to experiential education, to help train the next generation of change-makers and regenerative food and farming professionals.

His current research focuses on four interrelated themes: ecological design thinking, deep empathic design, systems design thinking and contemplative inquiry. With over 20 years of professional practice, mostly working with IDEO global design company, Roberto has designed products, environments and experiences for clients across Europe, America, India and the Far East. He holds a number of international design awards and patents - and his work has been featured in Domus, Business Week, Design Week, The Observer, and NewDesign magazine. Roberto studied Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London.

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.

Marie comes from a background in law and geography. She completed an LLB in French private law and went on to broaden her expertise by gaining two Master’s in environmental law and geography (sustainable environmental management) at the University of Limoges. Her PhD thesis focused on social change in protected areas of England and paved the way for her move from France to England to further her research and academic career. She has collaborated on a range of interdisciplinary research projects (art and environment) and was part of an international research team (iRGENT), funded by ESRC, NSF and ANR, studying international rural gentrification in the UK, USA and France. As a human geographer and environmental lawyer, Marie’s research interests focus on people and their relationships to place across a range of contexts (specifically in protected areas) and the interweaving of social and ecological landscapes.

Including being head of year for a foundation degree, Marie has taught a range of modules at undergraduate and master’s levels (ecology, environmental philosophy, conservation; and a range of qualitative methods). Her teaching explores how places are transformed by contemporary processes of (im)mobilities, entanglements between humans and more-than-humans, as well as understanding how places, nature and societies are (re)shaped. She has a deep interest in transformative learning and how embodied practices can lead to a deeper understanding of our world.

She is a practicing movement artist whose research actively seeks our transdisciplinary approaches to decolonizing body-place relationships, engaging creatively and imaginatively with cultural heritage and sustainability discourses. Rachel is a graduate of the BA Theatre Degree at Dartington College of Arts and holds an AHRC funded PhD from Middlesex University exploring site based approaches to movement training.

Rachel has worked as Head of Dance Studies at Liverpool Hope University (2010-2021), as a Visiting Fellow for the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University, and as Centre Fellow for the Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Plymouth. She is a current member of the European experimental heritage project Karum Creevagh and her research has been supported internationally through the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, Creative Ireland and CSIRO Australia, and locally through Dartmoor National Park Authorities, Teignmouth County Council and Dance in Devon.

He has a doctorate in particle physics from University College London and is working on a second doctorate in history and philosophy of science at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is co-editor of a number of books on Goethe’s approach to science and Holistic Science Journal.

Troy studied Physics with Astrophysics at Bristol University. After a year of studying jazz, he returned to physics and completed a doctorate at University College London with a thesis based on experimental research at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, near Chicago. He then studied Goethean science in America and Germany before moving to Berlin, where he pursued his interest in the history of language by studying classics at Humboldt University.

After a few years, he switched to philosophy with a focus on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language which lead into a second doctorate on which he is currently working. His thesis develops a Wittgensteinian approach to the history and philosophy of science that is based on seeing connections. He has published articles on Newton, Goethe, Wittgenstein, Barfield and Bortoft, as well as edited and translated a number of books on Goethean science.

Troy co-edits the Holistic Science Journal, has edited Experience Colour (a large format exhibition catalogue that presents an exploration, understanding and application of colour), co-edited What is Colour?, the collected works of Michael Wilson's groundbreaking holistic colour research, and co-edited Goethe, Ritter und die Polarität, an historical and scientific investigation of the polarity of optical phenomena.