WEBINAR – Envisioning a sustainable future in Northampton
Northampton University – Faculty of Business and Law
Envisioning a sustainable future in Northampton: promoting a green post-pandemic recovery
Date: 23-11-2020 – from 4pm to 6pm
Collaborate link: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/d5c43a58fe444b28afcd856467af75cf
If you want to attend this event please click here to send an email to Elodie René before November 21st.
Description:
This webinar will gather UK-based researchers and practitioners involved in environmental and social
sustainability transitions.
Discussions will be structured around the following key questions:
1) What are the environmental origins of pandemics such as COVID-19?
2) Why our collective answer to this pandemic should integrate environmental parameters?
3) Can we afford (socially and ecologically) a business as usual recovery scenario?
4) To which extent a local ecological – degrowth transition can open new perspective to recover
from the Covid crisis?
Webinar Moderators: Elodie René
Confirmed speakers:
1. Overview of the impacts of current health crisis on the most deprived communities in Northampton
Robin Burgess
Chief executive at Northampton Hope Center and Chairperson at Northampton social
enterprise town.
2. Ecological transition in Northampton a grassroots perspective: a short history of Transition Town Northampton
David Garlick
Founder of Transition Town Northampton part of the global Transition network.
3. Why creating the conditions for a flourishing of the imagination is vital to the climate emergency?
Rob Hopkins,
Rob Hopkins is cofounder of Transition Town Totnes and Transition Network, and the author
of The Transition Handbook, The Transition Companion, The Power of Just Doing Stuff, 21
Stories of Transition and most recently, From What Is to What If: unleashing the power of
imagination to create the future we want. He presents the podcast series ‘From What If to
What Next‘ which invites listeners to send in their “what if” questions and then explores how
to make them a reality. In 2012, he was voted one of the Independent’s top 100
environmentalists and was on Nesta and the Observer’s list of Britain’s 50 New Radicals.
Hopkins has also appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Four Thought and A Good Read, in the French film
phenomenon Demain and its sequel Apres Demain, and has spoken at TEDGlobal and three
TEDx events.
An Ashoka Fellow, Hopkins also holds a doctorate degree from the University of Plymouth and
has received two honorary doctorates from the University of the West of England and the
University of Namur. He is a keen gardener, a founder of New Lion Brewery in Totnes, and a
director of Totnes Community Development Society, the group behind Atmos Totnes, an
ambitious, community-led development project.
4. Potential and limits of circular economy within the entertainment industry: an insider perspective
Tom Harper
Unusual Rigging, Managing Director
Tom was appointed as managing director at Unusual Rigging in April 2020. In his role as
sustainability coordinator, Tom established the company’s carbon reduction strategy in 2013
and is exploring the company’s potential, as an organization, to pioneer a ‘circular economic’
business model within the industry. Tom has an MBA in Innovation and the Circular Economy
and is co-project managing the implementation of a custom asset tracking software system
which will also improve the efficiency of the company’s workflow.
5. Can we afford a business as usual recovery scenario? Envisioning a Degrowth case against the business case.
Fabian Maier and Iana Nesterova,
Fabian is a PhD researcher at Nottingham University in the field of critical organisation
studies and studies cooperatives, grassroots and community-based organisations in relation
to degrowth. Fabian is interested in discourses around prefiguration, post-work, and
solidarity economies. He is a member of the ‘Degrowth Organisation and Economy Research
Group’ and active in a worker co-operative in the East Midlands.
Iana Nesterova, PhD is a researcher based in the UK. Her PhD focused on small business transition towards degrowth. Iana’s research interests include the philosophy underpinning sustainable change
and what sustainable change means and entails. She currently teaches health economics
from a heterodox economics perspective. She is a member of SUCH (Sustainable Change)
research network and the ‘Degrowth Organisation and Economy Research Group’.
degrowthUK 