About us
As a collective we are motivated to create positive change in the world. Inspired by the resilience and energy of communities, we are committed to thoughtful collaborations that enable us all to think differently about the world around us.
The urgency of the climate and ecological crises serves as a constant reminder about the importance of sharing and learning from others (human and nonhuman) and the natural world. Through our work, we are exploring and experimenting ways real people can turn ideas into real action to foster ecological awareness and sustainable practices within their communities and environments.
Curiosity unites our varied disciplines and experiences whilst our belief in justice, equality and inclusivity pushes our explorations and actions in our mission to become responsible, creative, practical Ecological Citizens.
We are based across three UK institutions. The Royal College of Art in London, The Stockholm Environment Institute at University of York and Wrexham University / Prifysgol Wrecsam in North Wales.
The EC Team
Sharon Baurley
Co-Investigator, RCA
Sharon Baurley is Professor of Design & Materials, and Director of the Materials Science Research Centre at the Royal College of Art in London, UK.
She has a 22-year history of leading and managing UK research council-funded interdisciplinary projects totalling £10m, and a track record of conceptualising and directing inter-disciplinary R&D projects - straddling design, computer science, engineering, materials science, psychology, neuroscience - involving academic-industry partnerships.
She is currently one of the centre directors in the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) Programme - a four-year £30 million investment from UKRI to move the UK towards a circular economy.
Emily Boxall
Network+ Manager
Emily is a cross-disciplinary designer, maker and researcher specialising in social innovation and sustainability.
Her work spans multiple subjects including sustainable futures, systems design, social innovation, the future of food + food security, policy, environmental materials, illustration, fashion and textiles.
Her recent research has focused on: community-collaboration as a way to connect the population with nature for health and well-being and improved biodiversity, the potential of green-social prescribing in the NHS and democratising environmental sustainable practices for the masses.
She believes that joy, play and hope are severely underrated tools in design, particularly design for planetary and societal change.
Jana Busch
Comms Specialist, SEI / University of York
Jana is a passionate advocate for sustainable development and climate action. With a talent for translating complex scientific information into engaging formats for diverse audiences, Jana aims to help create meaningful research impact around the world. Jana holds an undergraduate degree in Sustainable Development and a master's degree in Environmental Science, specialising in Environmental Communication. She has working experience as a research and teaching assistant and previously worked at a global NGO driving sustainability in the textile industry.
Luke Gooding
PDRA, SEI / University of York
Luke is a Research Associate working on the Ecological Citizens project, and is passionate about promoting equitable futures for communities of all types: communities with healthy places to live, work, and take leisure.
Luke has a Masters in Resource Management and a PhD on the effect of the Green Deal policy on homeowners and commercial stakeholders. Luke’s research spans from stakeholder involvement in retrofit decision-making in a commercial building environment, to working with large demonstration Smart Local Energy System (SLES) projects to explore their stakeholder engagement strategies.
Mary Hill
Administrator, Wrexham University
Mary has a background in working in the voluntary sector and with independent businesses. She is passionate about working together to create change and human-scale business. Mary has a Youth and Community Work degree and an MA in Art Practice from Wrexham University. In her work as an artist, she is interested in seasonal cycles and natural systems.
Daniel Knox
Advisor, Wrexham University
With a passion for product design and an eye for functional products that stand the test of time, Daniel has enjoyed an exciting career within various industries of design and engineering. From creating performance fabrics to crafting premium electronic consumer goods and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), he has acquired invaluable experience and skills that have put him in an advantageous position in the industry.
In 2014, he worked at Dyson in consumer research, prototyping, testing, and design for manufacture. At Unilever's Global Design Technology Hub he designed for mass production, and developed plans and strategies to meet Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan.
Daniel hopes during the Ecological Citizens research project he will help set a new standard to prepare communities in helping nurture the environment for generations to come. As a lecturer, he has been able to share his diverse knowledge and experience of different techniques, design methodologies, and ways of working gained from a varied industry experience.
Charlotte Nordmoen
PDRA, RCA
Charlotte Nordmoen is a trans-disciplinary design researcher and Research Associate at the Ecological Citizen Network+. Currently completing her Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction at Queen Mary University of London, Charlotte's research revolves around the influence of materials on processes of making and the worlds these practices enact. Her work challenges the human-centred paradigm, making room for a more-than-human approach to design and making. Building on themes explored in her MA, Charlotte's design work has been showcased at prestigious institutions like MAK Museum Vienna. She is committed to reshaping design thinking within an ecological context.
Rob Phillips
Principal Investigator, RCA
Designer; 5 patents, 3 + million products in retail, live saving fire / ballistics and more. His PhD informed relationships between Open Design and Citizen Science. His research (to date) has collaboratively raised over £7 million. Previous collaborations include, My Naturewatch with the Interaction Design Research Studio. Naturewatch used distributed design fostering people’s engagement in the natural world and was broadcast on BBC SpringWatch. His research seeks to ‘Engage Design’, decreasing our impact, gaining insights into sustainable transitions.
His latest book ‘FutureKind, design for and by the people’, culminates research to be ‘holistically sustainable’ being FutureKind to PlanetKind.
Dan Price
Administrator, RCA
Dan has a background in STEAM publishing, having worked for several years for Macmillan Reference / Nature Publishing Group. Subsequently, he handled comms & engagement for the British Society for Immunology. He’s a keen editor and holds a Diploma in Technical & Commercial Authorship – but fights the impulse to be a pedant. He loves the natural world, and in his spare time is a (very) amateur mycologist, and observer of dragonflies.
Jude Pullen
Technologist-in-Residence, RCA
Winner of the IMechE Alastair Graham-Bryce ‘Imagineering’ Award, Jude is a creative technologist and engineer who also thinks like an artist. He takes a holistic approach to problem solving, and enthuses organisations to embrace changes for the better. He empowers individuals and institutions to become the architect of their own solutions. Jude believes that by asking the most relevant questions, the solution will address core issues with long-lasting benefits. Featured Inventor in BBC Two's Big Life Fix documentary, Jude has worked for NHS, Dyson, LEGO, RS, IKEA, Pentagram, JLR, ProtoLabs, Channel 4, RCA, Design Council, UCL, Imperial College, and many start-ups. Jude’s collaborative projects often blend Tech and Art, and have been featured in FastCo’s ‘World Changing Ideas’, as well as winning industry awards in marketing excellence. He has headlined events, and his TEDx talk on ‘Embracing Uncertainty’ has been used as a starting point for many new client projects in uncharted waters of AI, Machine Learning, New Hardware & IoT, Sustainability, DEI, and Futures.
Alec Shepley
Co-Investigator, Wrexham University
Alec is an academic and artist based in the Berwyn hills in north-east Wales. He is Associate Dean for Research within the Faculty of Arts, Science and Technology and Professor of Art and Society at Wrexham University.
Alec’s Artistic Research has attracted funding from multiple research councils and his work has been exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, with examples held in a number of public and private collections in north America, Europe and Asia.
Alec combines traditional methods of art production with ecological and social concerns to create compositions and performances. Merging action, writing, painting, drawing, found objects, assemblage, sonic and video art in specific locations, often neglected urban and rural sites.
Alec is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Senior Fellow of Advance HE and a Fellow of the Royal Cambrian Academy.
Tom Simmons
Co-Investigator, RCA
Tom leads the Digital Direction programme at the Royal College of Art, which explores how critical and collective storytelling using contemporary media can create positive social and ecological change. He specialises in critical sound practice and his research focuses on the politics and aesthetics of sound as it relates to communities, places, storytelling and technology. He has a long-standing interest in developing creative methods in cooperative and critically reflexive communication, and has co-led research initiatives with communities and organisations in many parts of the world.
Tracy Simpson
PDRA, Wrexham University
Tracy is a curator/project manager of art in the public realm and Research Associate (part-time) at the Ecological Citizen Network+. She is the Co-Director of Addo, an arts organisation she co-founded in 2011, which works with a range of partners to curate and manage critically situated art projects in the public realm that enhance the wider cultural ecologies of places, communities and sites. Her PhD investigated collaborative practices within the visual arts with a particular focus on notions of resilience. She drew on case studies, including Addo projects and work with Ty Pawb in Wrexham, to investigate notions of collaborative space/place making. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a Fellow of the Advance HE. Based in North Wales, she loves the outdoors and has been a scout leader for many years.
Rebecca Upton
PDRA, Wrexham University / CAT
Rebecca is a researcher with the Ecological Citizens project at Wrexham, as well as a Senior Lecturer in Sustainability and Behavioural, Social and System change at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT). Rebecca's PhD research was with the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. She researched radical pedagogic practices at the Eden Project, Cornwall, exploring the transformative impact of sustainable ecological education. In research, she advocates the power of qualitative research through creative methods to explore complex issues. In her teaching, she pursues imaginative, embodied, and disruptive methods to learning. She has extensive experience in the charity sector as well as in research, consultancy, management and logistics positions including large-scale arts and events roles.
Sarah West
Co-Investigator, SEI / University of York
Sarah West is Director of SEI York, a science to policy research institute focusing on sustainability, based at the University of York. Her expertise is in citizen science, a method that brings together researchers and members of the public to answer questions of importance to them. Much of Sarah's work has been around biodiversity, air pollution and health. She is passionate about increasing the diversity of people involved in citizen science.
Previous Associates
Gavin Kellerman
Administrator, Wrexham University
Joanna Wright
PDRA, Wrexham University
Joanna Wright is a Welsh interdisciplinary artist and researcher and research associate on Ecological Citizens. She often works in long-term collaborations with communities, archive collections, and scientists, exploring relationships between people, place, environment, and time. She was a long-term artist in residence with the Zero Carbon Britain research project at the Centre for Alternative Technology, a multi-decade initiative that models a zero-emission society using currently available technology. Joanna is also a Senior Fellow at the Co-Creation Studio in the Open Documentary Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Our Advisory Board
Our wonderful advisory board oversees the running of Ecological Citizen(s) Network+ and to provide advice on the strategic direction and activities of the project.
They are external to our core research team and project partners and act as a critical voice to ensure we are doing work that aligns with our values and our mission to foster and proactively encourage (through technologically appropriate interventions) Ecological Citizenship for positive climate action.
We are always looking for enthuastic, critical experts to join our voluntary advisory board - get in touch if this interests you.
Advisory Board
Jon Alexander
Jon is author of CITIZENS: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us, and co-founder of the New Citizenship Project, a book and company that work to shift the dominant story of the individual in society from Consumer to Citizen. Among other plaudits, CITIZENS was recently listed by McKinsey as one of its Top 5 Recommended Books in its Summer Reading Guide 2022, described as "an underground hit" in the Financial Times, and selected by the World Economic Forum for its CEO Book Club. Jon began his career with a decade in the advertising industry, winning the prestigious Big Creative Idea of the Year, before making a dramatic change. Driven by a deep need to understand the impact on society of 3,000 commercial messages a day, he gathered three Masters degrees, exploring Consumerism and its alternatives from every angle. In 2014, he co-founded the New Citizenship Project to bring the resulting ideas into contact with reality.
Citizens, Book ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Citizen Future: Why We Need A New Story Of Self And Society ↗Jo Barnard
Jo is the Founder and Creative Director of industrial design and innovation consultancy Morrama. From the idea curation phase right through to manufacturing and distribution, she continues to push the boundaries of innovation with Morrama on a day-to-day basis in her work with both start-ups and scale-ups. Alongside championing of the role of sustainability in design through her Sustainable Design Handbook, Jo is co-instigator of the Design Declares! campaign, encouraging a world-wide shift in design practice to better protect and regenerate our planet. She has been featured in the Times, BBC CEO Secrets, WIRED, TechRound and is one of the few female founders within the design, tech and product development industries. Outside of her work at Morrama, she is an Associate Lecturer of Design Futures at the RCA.
Sustainable Design Handbook ↗ Morrama ↗ Design Declares! ↗ LinkedIn ↗Tony Fry
Tony is an award-winning designer, cultural theorist, educator and author. He is adjunct Professor of Architecture and Design at the University of Tasmania, Visiting Professor at University of Ibaguè (Colombia), and the principal of The Studio at the Edge of the World.
Tony was formerly Professor of Design at Griffith University, Brisbane (2007-2014). His research interests include post-sustainability, ontological design, cosmotechnics, decoloniality, politics and conflict. Tony has published twenty books. He is currently working on a book on contrapractice with Dulmini Perera, Bauhaus University, Weimer, and Political Breakout in a series on a New Political Imagination edited with Madina Tlostanove, Linköping University, Sweden.
Hannah Jameson
Hannah Jameson is Climate Change Programme Director at London Councils. She leads London's ambitious climate programme to reach Net Zero and create a fairer, more climate resilient city. The Programme harnesses the leadership, relationships and capabilities of local government to develop replicable and scalable solutions to climate change and provides a forum for innovators, investors and government partners to work effectively with London.
Hannah has been working in London government for over 12 years and previously held roles in consultancy and policy research.
Matt Jones
Matt is Head of Design at Lunar Energy, a company building the world’s best clean energy products to deliver home electrification at scale.
He has been designing digital products and services since 1995. His various roles and projects include creative director for the launch of BBC News Online; working at Nokia looking at the human experience of play; principal at BERG, a design and invention company that had projects exhibited in MoMA, and products featured in the FT, FastCompany, Wired and Marvel comics.
In 2013 joined the Google Creative Lab where projects he worked on included Google Expeditions and Project Sunroof. As part of Google’s Research division, he worked on AI concepts for hardware and services until 2021.
He originally studied Architecture, has written on interaction design (amongst other things) for 20 years at Petafloptimism and has taught design at the RCA, Goldsmiths, SVA, Umea and CIID.
Jo Marsh
Jo is Creative Director at Ty Pawb – a hybrid arts, markets and community organisation in Wrexham, North Wales. Jo is part of the international Association de Arte Util, and has established Useful Art Practices across Ty Pawb’s programmes, including the development of a community garden on the rooftop, a ‘Useful Art Space’, constituent led / co-produced exhibitions, and an embedded playwork ethos. This work has been recognised internationally via Ty Pawb’s being shortlisted for Art Fund Museum of the Year 2022, and featuring in the Whitworth Gallery’s ‘Economics the Blockbuster’ exhibition as part of Manchester International Festival 2023.
Jo writes about Useful Art programming from the perspective of Ty Pawb as a hybrid model, for the platform dpe.tools (developed between the Whitworth Gallery, Liverpool John Moores University, and the Association de Arte Util).
Andy Schofield
As Director of Environment Platform Wales, Andy helps to bridge the gap between academia and government. The Platform facilitates events and activities which bring together cross-disciplinary groups of researchers, together with policy makers from Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales, assisting knowledge exchange and developing a mutual understanding of the environmental research needs in Wales and beyond.
Andy and the EPW team support the next generation of ecological citizens by providing careers guidance to students across Wales, assisting those who wish to evolve their passion, and urge to act for the environment, into future career paths.
Andy’s career has involved fisheries, land management, conservation and water-quality roles within Natural Resources Wales and predecessor organisations, and prior to joining academia, he worked on the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon project.
In his ‘spare’ time, Andy also helps to manage the work of the South East Wales Rivers Trust, a small environmental charity seeking to protect the river habitats and species of south Wales and raise awareness of the amazing resource on the doorstep of local communities.