Tom Mustill is a biologist turned filmmaker and writer.
His work with David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, Stephen Fry and conservation and science heroes across the globe have won over 30 international awards, including two Webbys, a Wildscreen Panda, two Jackson Wild Awards and been nominated for a Primetime Emmy.
His book “How to Speak Whale: a Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication” is out now
Sven Batke is Associate Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange – Reader in Plant Science, Edge Hill University. He completed his PhD at Trinity College Dublin in Plant Biology. He currently holds the position of Associate Head of Research and Knowledge in Biology and is a Reader in Plant Sciences. His research interests are in crop science, tropical ecology and taxonomy.
Nicholas P. Money (Nik Money) is a gentleman of letters, mycologist, and professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of popular science books that celebrate the diversity of the microbial world. His latest book, ‘Molds, Mushrooms, and Medicines’, reveals our dependence on the fungi from the billions of yeasts in the gut microbiome, or mycobiome, to the mushroom colonies that support plants and spin the carbon cycle.
Jane Scobie is sculptor working on environmental issues, her research areas include biodiversity, extraction and ocean literacy. Her MA work explores the Strandline, a ‘living system’ as material, model and metaphor to understand our relationship with the ocean in the context of climate breakdown. Jane uses materials and processes with a low environmental impact and has a circular creative approach to design – remaking and re-using work.
Predrag Slijepcevic is a Senior Lecturer in Biology, Brunel University London
“I am a bio-scientist interested in the philosophy of biology. In particular, I investigate how biological systems, from bacteria to animals and beyond, perceive and process environmental stimuli (biological information) and how this processing, which is a form of natural learning, affects the organism-environment interactions. I aim to identify those elements in the organization of biological systems that lead to forms of natural epistemology, or biological intelligence, that may qualify them as cognitive agents.
In particular, I specialise in analysis of chromosomes and study of structures at chromosome ends called telomeres. My other interest is animal behavior developed while studying veterinary medicine. I have lately developed interest in insects and their propensity to develop technologies.”
Nicolás M. Morato is a PhD Candidate in Chemistry, Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana
His areas of interest are : Mass spectrometry, ambient ionization (e.g. DESI, paper-spray, touch-spray), bioanalysis, forensic chemistry, high throughput analysis.
Lindsay Olson’s artistic practice grows out of an intense curiosity about the ways our society is supported by science and technology. She has worked as Fermi National Accelerator’s first artist in residence, with the CMS experiment at CERN in Switzerland, with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, the Field Museum, the Chicago Botanic Garden and with the Center for Acoustics Research and Education at the University of New Hampshire.
In 2022/24, she worked as the first artist in residence with The Wetlands Initiative, a scrappy wetland restoration group working in the Midwest,USA.
Thaddeus Holownia is a visual artist, teacher, letterpress printer and publisher. In Holownia’s large-scale photographs, he uses the idea of heightened perception to explore the traces humankind leaves on the landscape. About his work, he echoes Thoreau’s observation, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”. In this interview with art and ecology author, John K. Grande, he discusses his ideas and work.
Jana Norman is an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. Jana also teaches in the English, Creative Writing and Film Department at the University of Adelaide. Jana’s research interests in environmental humanities and legal theory focus on critical and creative approaches to collaborating across difference towards reparative shared futures. Her book, ‘Posthuman Legal Subjectivity: Reimagining the Human in the Anthropocene’ (Routledge 2021) received the Socio-Legal Studies Theory and History Book Prize in 2022 and the Chris Beasley Prize for Gender and Sexuality Theory from the Fay Gale Center for Research on Gender at the University of Adelaide in 2021.
Benjamin Gearey is lecturer in environmental archaeology, University College Cork, with a wide range of research interests focused on wetland and especially peatland environments. He is PI for the ongoing IRC COALESCE funded project IPeAAT, and was CO-I for the recently completed EU Joint Planning Initiative/Cultural Heritage funded project ‘WetFutures’ and other IRC funded projects.
He is a member of the United Nations Global Peatlands Initiative and an elected member of the JPICH Scientific Advisory Committee with expertise in past climate change. He is editor of The Journal of Wetland Archaeology and has published extensively on aspects of peatland heritage, environmental change and human impact, in peer reviewed journals and books, including the recently published ‘An Introduction to Peatland Archaeology and Palaeoenvironments’ (Oxbow Books, 2023).
Maureen O’Connor is a lecturer at the School of English and Digital Humanities in University College Cork. “I am an Irish Studies scholar, specializing in women’s writing, from the late nineteenth century to today. Much of my work is ecofeminist analysis, including my first book, The Female and the Species: The Animal in Irish Women’s Writing.”
Dr Rosie Everett is a Lecturer in Forensic Science at Northumbria University with a specialist interest in forensic ecology and environmental trace evidence. As a former environmental archaeologist, she has research experience and interest in past environmental archives (pollen, diatoms) for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction with a focus on peatlands and peatland heritage. She has worked with government bodies and NGOs to develop policy and action to support peatland restoration groups and communities in the management and protection of peatland heritage in the face of climate change.