Speakers' Biographies

Corinna Byrne is a Fulbright scholar and is currently completing her PhD in soil carbon at the University of Limerick. She is Feasta's co-ordinator for the Carbon Cycles and Sinks Project which began work at the beginning of October 2008. Working in collaboration with Richard Douthwaite, Corinna is assembling a network of all the relevant researchers in Ireland and overseas. The project's website went live in January 2009. Corinna is now a member of the Feasta Executive Committee.

Julian Darley is the founder of Global Public Media and Post Carbon Institute, pioneer organisations which work to provide education about and demonstrate solutions for problems of energy depletion, climate change and ecosystem decline. He is also the author of High Noon For Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis. Julian is now researching the complex history of decision-making with the aim of helping understand how high-level decision-making, in government and business, can be influenced towards creating a sustainable, low-carbon economy.

Bruce Darrell was educated as an architect and has been actively involved in developing sustainable communities with Dublin Co-housing and more recently with the Village Project, where he is active in the areas of education, food and land use. Co-founder of the Dublin Food Growing initiative, he has a keen interest in developing urban and small-scale agriculture systems, and in exploring the many possibilities and benefits of reintegrating human habitation with food production. He runs several courses on how to grow food, and is working to establish a series of research and educational gardens.

Brian Davey trained as an economist but, aside for a brief spell working in East Germany showing how to do community development work, has spent most of his life working in the community and voluntary sector in Nottingham -particularly in the health promotion, mental health and environmental fields. He helped develop Ecoworks, a community garden and environmental project for people with mental health problems. He is a member of the Feasta Energy and Climate Working Group and the Co-ordinator of Cap and Share UK. His life long interest is why and how people and systems break down.

Richard Douthwaite is an economist, journalist and author specialising in energy, climate and sustainability issues. He is the co-founder of the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability (Feasta), an economics think-tank based in Ireland. His books include The Growth Illusion (1992), widely regarded as a classic, Short Circuit (1996) and The Ecology of Money (1999).

Alex Evans is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, where he runs CIC's work on climate change and global public goods. He was seconded to the UN in 2007 as part of the team coordinating the Secretary-General's high level event on climate change. He has recently completed a joint CIC - Chatham House project on the international implications of rising food prices. From 2003 to 2006, Alex was Special Adviser to Hilary Benn, then the UK Secretary of State for International Development.

Professor Michael Hayes teaches in the department of Chemical and Environmental Sciences at the University of Limerick. The teaching duties of Dr. Hayes have involved the teaching of Organic Chemistry at all levels during his career in the University of Birmingham, and of Environmental Chemistry (The Chemistry of the Colloids in Soils and in Waters) during the period 1993-1998. His core research interests have centered around 'Studies of the Compositions, Structures, and Interactions of the Organic and Inorganic Colloids in Soils and in Waters'.

David Korowicz is a physicist who studies the interactions between economics, energy, climate change, food security, supply chains, and complexity. He is on the executive of Feasta and an independent consultant. He is former head of research for The Ecology Foundation, and was recently appointed to the council of Comhar, Ireland's Sustainable Development Partnership.

Dmitry Orlov was born in Leningrad and immigrated to the United States at the age of 12. He was an eyewitness to the Soviet collapse over several extended visits to his Russian homeland between the late eighties and mid-nineties. He is an engineer with a BS in Computer Engineering and an MA in Applied Linguistics. Orlov describes in his book Reinventing Collapse "the waning days of the American Empire". He explains how the US administration finds itself mired in political crisis, how its foreign policy has come under sharp criticism; and why the economy is in steep decline. Orlov believes that these trends mirror the experience of the Soviet Union in the early 1980's. By examining the circumstances of the demise of the Soviet superpower, Orlov offers clear insights into how the world might prepare for coming events.

Emer O'Siochru is a qualified Architect and Valuation Surveyor, Development and Planning. She is a founder and current board member of Feasta. Emer is director of EOS Future Design which designs and develops sustainable systems and settlements. She also is serving as Project Manager for the Smart Tax Network for policy development led by Feasta, funded by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

Davie Philip is the Education Manager at the Cultivate Centre for sustainable living and learning in Dublin. He was a founding member of both Feasta and Sustainable Projects Ireland LTD, the company behind the sustainable community project in Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary. Recently appointed onto the board of Sustainable Energy Ireland, Davie has also directed and launched Powerdown TV, 10 shows designed to help citizens respond to oil depletion and climate change.

James Pike was a founder partner in Delany Mac Veigh and Pike, which was set up in 1964. This practice evolved into O'Mahony Pike in 1992. He has played a continuing role in the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland since the 1960's culminating in the presidency from 2006  2007. He is currently Chairman of the Irish Architecture Foundation and a founding member of the Urban Forum. He currently contributes to the many urban design projects in the practice, and a number of architectural projects, and has promoted a number of research projects with the Urban Forum and on sustainability issues with DIT and UCD since the 1980's. He has played a major role in several publications including Dublin City in Crisis, New Housing and New Housing in Context which is due to be published in early 2009 by the R.I.A.I.

Mark Rutledge is country director with The Ecology Foundation having spent 20 years working with a number of global healthcare companies, most recently as European Supply Chain Director with a major healthcare company. With a B.Sc. from NUIM, Mark graduated with a M.Sc. in environmental science from UCD in 2007. His final thesis is centred on aspects of the carbon cycle, central to any discussion on climate change. Prior to joining The Ecology Foundation, Mark worked as a consultant to the Dail parliamentary committee on Climate Change and Energy Security. He is an executive member with a number of NGOs that are involved in the areas of environment and climate change and travelled to the COP13 and COP14 climate change summits. Mark has also delivered lectures on climate change at colleges and conferences in the UK and Ireland.

Anne B. Ryan is currently a university lecturer in adult and community education. She has been researching and writing about the philosophy of enough for many years and regularly conducts workshops and seminars on sustainable living, positive futures and balanced living. Her book Enough is Plenty; Public and Private Policies for the 21st Century will be published later this year.

Ludwig Schuster studied architecture and urban planning at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and is now living in Berlin. He was the founding member and co-director of the regional development agency REGIOprojekt and organised the first international conference on "monetary regionalisation". He currently works as a consultant and researcher with a focus on monetary tools for sustainable (regional) development. His scientific research as a "currency architect" concentrates on complementary currencies, primarily currency design issues, energy backed currencies and applications for financing renewables and preventing climate change. Lobbying for "monetary pluralism" at federal level, Ludwig is collaborating intensely with the MonNetA Foundation Steyerberg, the german Regiogeld association and a great number of complementary currency initiatives in Germany and in Europe.

John Sharry has trained as a scientist, social worker and psychotherapist. He is the author of ten books on parenting, positive psychology and mental health and is the co-developer of a number of award winning mental health programmes used throughout Ireland and abroad. He is the Director of the Parents Plus Charity and co-leader of the Technology in Mental Health Research Group in Trinity College Dublin.

Dan Sullivan is director of Saving Communities and the past secretary of the Council of Georgist Organizations. He led successful efforts to get shifts to land value tax in Pittsburgh, and helped win shifts in other Pennsylvania cities. He has testified at US Congressional subcommittee hearings and at state legislative hearings.

Chris Vernon has eight years' experience with France Telecom / Orange where he is a principal engineer specialising in radio network architecture and off-grid solar power solutions for telecoms infrastructure in the emerging market. He is also European editor of The Oil Drum, the Internet's most popular weblog studying energy security and policy, trustee for the Centre for Sustainable Energy and regular speaker on energy security.

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