Our Researchers

His research interests include autoethnography, ecological arts practice, conservation and conversations around re/wilding, regenerative agriculture and the politics of being and selfhood in the Anthropocene. He is currently developing a number of projects on the Lizard in Cornwall at the intersection of contemporary arts research and re/wilding, conservation and the politics of land in collaboration with Professor Caitlin DeSilvey at the University of Exeter. He has undertaken post-doctoral research as a National Productivity Investment Fellow at Falmouth University in collaboration with the National Trust. Published papers include writing for the New Statesman, Digital Creativity Journal and the Living Maps Review.

As an artist he has developed a practice of Romantic Conceptualism that does not restrict itself to traditional boundaries, mediums or modes of practice, but rather develops a responsive way of being and making that is composed of and by its present context. He has exhibited internationally in exhibitions from New York to St. Petersburg.

Exhibitions include: This is The Future, Chiltern Sculpture Trail; British Art Show 6, Newcastle; Deptford X Festival, London; Conflux Festival of Psychogeography, New York; Artisterium, Tbilisi, Georgia; Performance Writing 12, Arnolfini, Bristol; Sideways: a festival of walking, Belgium; Remote Performances, Outlandia/Resonance FM, Scotland; Venice Biennale; HIDE, Secret Garden Party, Cambridge; Hermitage, Newlyn Gallery and Unbounded, Eden Project.

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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.

He is also Tutor and academic board member at the Temenos Academy, Research Associate at the Margaret Beaufort Institute, Cambridge, and Visiting Lecturer at numerous other institutions. His latest book is Shakespeare and the Grace of Words (Routledge, 2022).

As well as his abiding enthusiasm for Shakespeare, Valentin teaches and writes on a wide variety of subjects, including William Blake, Dante, Rainer Maria Rilke, Kathleen Raine, Northrop Frye, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, W.B. Yeats, Ivan Illich, Heraclitus, John Scotus Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa, and the Western contemplative and mystical traditions. His current research projects touch on the poetic wisdom of nature in pre-modern texts (for example, in Eriugena, Hildegarde of Bingen and Bernardus Sylvestris), contemplative philosophies of nature and the poetics and metaphysics of ritual and liturgy.

Valentin holds an MA from the University of Kent and a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has published in journals such as Journal of the Philosophy of Education, Heythrop Journal, Religions, Medieval Mystical Theology, Temenos Academy Review and Modern Theology.

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.

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.

During this time TGL has established over 30 community food projects, businesses, and co-operative ventures designed to be self-supporting but to benefit from the mutual support provided under the TGL umbrella. The resulting network of projects have been shaped to grow resilience and respond to market failures around small-scale food production, and to revitalise local food consumption, production and employment opportunities. Simon brings his academic, business and supply chain development experience to the BSc Regenerative Food and Farming at Dartington.

He founded both the Oral Tradition and Living Myth courses at Stanford University, and was Artistic Director of the Great Mother Conference in Maine for nine years, inheriting the position from Robert Bly.
His areas of interest are Irish myth and folklore, the philosophy of John Moriarty, the Grail legend of Parzival, Siberian folk tales and indigenous culture, contemporary Romanticism, Ethnopoetics, the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca and Ted Hughes.

His work has ranged from writing the 2019 catalogue for Ai Weiwei, Life Cycle, to a 101 day vigil in a Dartmoor forest, which became the book Wolferland. He has been awarded the Price, Bretherton, Elgood Award for outstanding achievements in the arts, and the Summerfield Scholarship to the British School in Rome. His first book, A Branch from The Lightning Tree, won the Nautilus Book Prize. Amongst others he has been published in The Mississippi Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry International, Orion, Poetry Magazine and the New England Review.
His books are Bardskull (2022); Elk Bone is Bright Owl (2022); A Hut at the Edge of the Village: The Beauty and Trouble of John Moriarty (2021); Smoke Hole (2021); Red Bead Woman (2020); All Those Barbarians (2020); Wolferland (2020); Courting the Wild Twin (2020); Wolf Milk: Chthonic Memory in the Deep Wild (2019); The Night Wages (2019, 2020); The Five Fathoms (Hedgespoken Press, 2018); The Mythteller trilogy: Scatterlings (2016), Snowy Tower (2014), A Branch from the Lightning Tree (2011).

His translations are Poems of Lorca: Courting the Dawn (with Stephan Harding) (Cista Mystica Press, 2019); Cinderbiter: Celtic Poems (with Tony Hoagland) (Graywolf Press, 2020).

His essays include Ai Weiwei: Life Cycle (Marciano Art Foundation, 2019); An Earth That Thinks in Myth: Temenos Academy Review (Temenos Academy, 2019); Ted Hughes: Etiquette of the Uncanny (The Ted Hughes Society Journal, 2018); Small Gods: Oikosophia, From the Intelligence of the Heart to Ecophilosophy (Associazione Culturale Mimesis, 2017).

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