Deep Adaptation

Sean Kelly, PhD, is Professor of Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). He is the author of Becoming Gaia: On the Threshold of Planetary Initiation ; Coming Home: The Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era ; co-editor of The Variety of Integral Ecologies: Nature, Culture, and Knowledge in the Planetary Era ; and co-translator of Edgar Morin’s Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium . Along with his academic work, Sean teaches Taiji and is a facilitator of the group process the Work that Reconnects.

Joanna Macy,PhD, is a scholar of Buddhism, deep ecology and general systems theory and a respected voice in the movements for peace, justice and ecology. She is the root teacher of the Work that Reconnects and author of many articles and books, including Coming Back to Life ; World as Lover, World as Self ; Active Hope (with Chris Johnstone); Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory ; Widening Circles: A Memoir ; and In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus (with Anita Barrows).

Vanessa de Oliveira Andreottiholds a Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change at the Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Drawing on different critiques of colonialism and human exceptionalism, her research examines the interface between historical, systemic and ongoing forms of violence, and the material and existential dimensions of unsustainability within modernity. She is one of the founding members of the Gesturing Decolonial Futures Collective ( decolonialfutures.net) and one of the initiators of the In Earth’s Care Network of indigenous communities in Latin America.

Rupert Readis a professor of philosophy at the University of East Anglia. He is author of eleven books, including This Civilisation is Finished (2019) and A Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment (2018). He is a former chair of Green House think tank, and a former Green Party of England and Wales councillor, spokesperson, European parliamentary candidate and national parliamentary candidate. He has written for the Guardian , the Independent , the Ecologist and a range of other newspapers and websites.

Skeena Rathor, a Sufi Kashmiri, helped by her three daughters, the family, the community of Stroud and the woodlands, spends time dancing between outward commitments. She works as a district councillor, co-founder of the Compassionate Stroud Project and co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, including the Co-Liberation and Power-fullness Project. Skeena has been teaching body-brain and heart-brain restoration work for 20 years, with a specialist focus on birth, mothering health, child development, breath, trauma and love – possessing thirteen certifications. Grief resulting from relationship losses has led Skeena to be a campaigner, activist and activator since the age of fifteen.

Daniel Rodary, an ecologist, initially studied emperor penguins and worked in the management of international scientific projects (International Council of Science, the Cousteau Society in Sudan) and as a guide-lecturer in polar regions (Antarctica, Spitzbergen, Greenland). Since 2010, he has been a coordinator of reforestation projects with local farmers in Haïti, India and Mexico, as well as an organic farmer in France and then South India. Since 2010, he has given lectures on climate change, planetary boundaries and biomimicry, co-founded Deep Adaptation Auroville in South India and is now involved in Deep Adaptation France ( Adaptation radicale ).

Pablo Servigneis an agricultural engineer with a PhD in biology (Belgium). He quit the academic world in 2008 to become an author and lecturer. He is the author of many articles and books about collapse, transition, resilience, agroecology and mutual aid, and is now editor-in-chief of the French magazine Yggdrasil . With Raphaël Stevens, he coined the word ‘collapsology’ in 2015 for the transdisciplinary study of the collapse of our civilization and the biosphere.

Charlotte Simpsonis in the final stage of an MSc in sustainable food and natural resources. Her current research focuses on sustainable diets, the significance of social and cultural influences on behaviour change, long-term maintenance of behaviour change and the role of education for social transformation in the face of climate breakdown.

Dino Siwekis an independent researcher from Brazil with a background in anthropology and social communication. His work focuses on the interactions between ecological crises and systemic violences and on experimental and counter-intuitive ways of learning that involve embodied practices as a way of finding deeper possibilities of being in and with the world. He is co-founder of the Terra Adentro project.

Matthew Slaterbuilds and runs open-source software for community currencies. His activism touches on various other topics, ranging from researching monetary theory to community building to the politics of software. He co-authored the Money & Society MOOC with Jem Bendell and has contributed to a handful of academic papers.

Sharon Steinis an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research brings critical and decolonial perspectives to the study and practice of internationalization, decolonization, and sustainability in higher education. Through this work, she engages the challenges, complexities and possibilities of addressing the interrelated ecological, cognitive, affective, relational, political and economic dimensions of local and global (in)justice.

Raphaël Stevens is an independent researcher, author and lecturer. He studied business and environmental management before taking an MSc in holistic science at the Schumacher College and Plymouth University. In 2006, he co-founded Greenloop, a consultancy offering support and guidance in circular economy. Associate researcher at the Momentum Institute (FR) since 2011, he is co-author of several books, including Comment tout peut s’effondrer (Seuil, 2015, with P. Servigne), translated into six languages (published by Polity in 2020 as How Everything Can Collapse ) and Another End of the World is Possible (Polity, 2021, with P. Servigne and G. Chapelle).

Rene Sušais a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on critiques of modernity and the modern subject based on postcolonial, decolonial and psychoanalytical thought. More specifically, he is interested in the educational challenges of generatively engaging with the unconscious modern/colonial desires, projections and affective investments that prevent us from expanding our imaginative, cognitive and relational capacities.

Adrian Taitworked for 26 years as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, also teaching and supervising MRCPsych trainees in Devon. In 2009, he undertook a visiting fellowship at the University of the West of England to help develop and coordinate a global psycho-social response to the climate crisis. This led to the formation in 2013 of the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA). Adrian has written extensively for the CPA and is active in bringing climate psychology perspectives to a wider audience.

Charlotte von Bülow, PhD, is a senior lecturer in leadership at the Bristol Business School, University of the West of England. She is the Founder of the Crossfields Institute Group (UK) – a state-recognized awarding organization for integrative education, a higher education institute and a consultancy. Charlotte has worked as an educator all her adult life; as a social entrepreneur, consultant and executive coach, she has served individuals, organizations and communities the world over. Her research and publications focus on integrative approaches to education, leadership in uncertainty and complex times and attentional ethics.