Visiting staff
The GSI has benefited from working in collaboration with various Visiting Staff from across a range of academic disciplines and vocational backgrounds. Visiting status is conferred by the Faculty, and all staff sit within one of our three key research themes.
Victor Anderson
Prof Victor Anderson works on the politics and economics of sustainability. Currently his main project is contributing research on political institutions for the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). He is also investigating the implications of the concept of "natural capital" as part of the Debating Nature's Value network.
Victor has previously worked as an economist for the UK Sustainable Development Commission, a government advisory body in Whitehall, and for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental NGO. He has worked at the House of Commons as a researcher for MPs, and was an elected politician for three years as a member of the London Assembly, also being appointed Environment Advisor to the Mayor and a Board member of the business-led London Development Agency. He is the author of two books, ‘Alternative Economic Indicators’ and ‘Energy Efficiency Policies’, and hopes that his work on CUSP will result in the third.
Nigel Cooper
Rev Canon Nigel Cooper joined the Global Sustainability Institute as a Visiting Fellow in 2014. He has been the University Chaplain for Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge since 2005, a post he still holds. He was rector of Rivenhall and Silver End, Essex, for many years before that, and a visiting fellow at Essex University. Nigel is an Honorary Canon of Ely Cathedral.
Nigel has combined his ecological and church interests in four main ways: Ecological consultant to the Church of England; Promoting general environmental awareness and behaviour; Encouraging a spiritual approach to nature and has led ‘nature and spirit’ retreats, and; Research into the philosophy of nature conservation and related topics.
Panayiotis Dimitrakopoulos
Dr Panayiotis G. Dimitrakopoulos studied environmental sciences in the Department of Environment of the University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece. He obtained his Ph.D. degree on the relationship between biodiversity, fire, and ecosystem processes in the Mediterranean grasslands, from the University of the Aegean in 2001. His postdoctoral research on the effects of biotope space on the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship is carried out in the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, and is funded from the European Science Foundation (LINKECOL program). He was elected to the position of Assistant professor in the Department of Environment, University of the Aegean in 2004, Associate professor in 2011 and Professor of Functional Ecology in 2018. He has served as a Head of Department from 2014 to 2018.
He has experience in biodiversity effects on ecosystem processes in Mediterranean ecosystems. His research also focuses on serpentine ecology, biodiversity conservation and planning, and conservation policy. He has served as President of the Hellenic Ecological Society (2012-2014), and he is a member of the National Committee for the Protected Areas Management of Greece (2010-today). He has participated in 15 national and European research projects. He serves as a member of editorial board of The Scientific World Journal (Ecology Domain, Hindawi Publishing Corporation), review editor in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, and referee for more than 40 journals. He has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and he has co-authored the Greek version of the book entitled A Primer of Conservation Biology (with R.B. Primack and M. Arianoutsou).
Bob Evans
In the 1960s Dr Robert (Bob) Evans counted sheep for two years in the Peak District: there were too many of them and they created bare soil and caused erosion. Bob came to Cambridge in late 1968 to research the use of remote sensing techniques for mapping soils. So started a lifetime of monitoring soil erosion in the UK. Much of the work on erosion in Britain was initiated by a short paper published by Bob in 1971. In the mid-1980s he organised a scheme monitoring water erosion of arable land in 17 localities in lowland England and Wales. Because, uniquely, there has been much monitoring of erosion in farmers’ fields in Britain, we can compare that information with modelled information and have discovered that models overstate erosion.
Bob has been an independent consultant since the late 1980s, most of that time also being a Research or Visiting Fellow in Cambridge Universities. He has worked with government departments, the Environment Agency, a major NGO, companies, farmers and the NFU and on university research contracts, as well as being an expert witness in court. His work in the uplands helped bring about changes in national grazing policy and he was an advisor to the Royal Commission on environmental pollution when it produced its report on Sustainable Use of Soil in 1996. Bob now considers that soil erosion, although a problem over the long-term (in causing the loss of a resource) and short-term (causing pollution of water courses by sediment), nutrients and pesticides transported from the land in runoff is the more pressing issue.
Sarah Hafner
Sarah is a research fellow at the ZHAW School of Engineering, where she investigates energy system transitions, applying system dynamics modelling. In her research, Sarah applies a special focus on the simulation of socio-economic dynamics (e.g. barriers and enablers of different low-carbon energy technologies) and solutions that tackle identified barriers (e.g. new policies, regulations or business models). Previously, she was a postdoc research fellow at the Global Sustainability Institute (GSI) at Anglia Ruskin University (UK) and contributed to the BEIS-funded research project ‘Economics of Energy Innovation and System Transition’.
Sarah has a background in economics (MSc) and system dynamics (MSc). Sarah’s ESRC-funded PhD investigated policy interventions to scale-up green finance into renewable energy infrastructure and the related macroeconomic implications thereof, using an own developed system dynamics energy-economy model.
Prior to her PhD, Sarah has worked at the Swiss Statistical Office and the German ‘Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)’. She has also held a position as lecturer at the Department of Economics and International Business at Anglia Ruskin University.
Her key research interests include: Climate Economics; energy-economy modelling; sustainable finance; energy transitions; energy innovation; system dynamics; complexity and systems thinking; socio-technical frameworks. Find Sarah on LinkedIn
Dario Kenner
Dario Kenner joined the Consumption & Change theme of the Global Sustainability Institute as a Visiting Fellow in April 2015.
Before joining the Institute, he did research on the World Bank at the Bretton Woods Project, worked on environmental issues with indigenous movements in Bolivia and monitored projects in Latin America for CAFOD.
In 2013 Dario launched the website whygreeneconomy.org as a space to discuss the political and economic policies that should be implemented to address energy, the environment climate change and biodiversity loss, as we move towards a more sustainable model on a finite planet.
Valadis Malesios
Dr Chrisovalantis (Valadis) Malesios is a Mathematical-Statistician, and is occupied as a teaching fellow at the Department of Environment, Aegean University been teaching tutorials in the fields of statistics and econometrics. Currently Valadis is on an educational leave from his institution and is affiliated with the Aston University, Aston Business School, working as a postdoctoral Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellow.
He has worked as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Agricultural Development, Democritus Univ. of Thrace for 9 years and as a statistician at the Institute of Statistical Research Analysis and Documentation (I.S.R.A.D.) of Athens University of Economics. He has published over 50 papers in international refereed journals such as: Statistics in Medicine, Ecological Indicators, PLοS ONE, Business Strategy and the Environment, Annals of Operations Research, Journal of Socio-Economics, European Societies and South European Society and Politics.
Richard Murphy
Richard Murphy is a UK based chartered accountant. He has been Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City, University of London since 2015. Richard previously co-founded the Tax Justice Network, and was then director of Tax Research LLP. He co-founded the Green New Deal Group and the Fair Tax Mark. His summary CV is available here.
Having worked and campaigned on tax, environmental and political economic issues for almost two decades Richard is returning to his first love of accountancy to direct the Corporate Accountability Network from November 2019. He worked as an accountant for the first two decades of his career, much of it as senior partner of a firm of chartered accountants, but also as a director of a number of entrepreneurial companies. He still holds a practicing certificate from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
John Stevenson
Dr John L Stevenson was awarded a PhD in Electrical Engineering, from the Imperial College of Science and Technology - then a part of the University of London - in 1973. John worked on technical and commercial assignments for British Telecom (1970-1978) and at INTELSAT (Washington D.C., 1979-1999), before becoming CTO of Orblynx Inc. and Director of Systems Planning for Astrolink LLC, both in the U.S. He has long held an interest in issues of sustainability and their international implications, all based upon a review of the original Limits to Growth research undertaken at M.I.T. and broadcast in circa 1980.
Over the past decade John has undertaken two lines of professional consultancy work, focused upon wireless telecom systems, and upon photographic image processing. In the first case, he specialised in the development of business case modeling and analytics. In the latter activity he is currently affiliated with Adobe Systems Inc., in the development of their Photoshop software product. He was invited to join the GSI as a Visiting Fellow in 2016, due to his skills in systems dynamic modelling and data interpretation.
Nick Tatchell
Nick Tatchell joined the GSI in May 2019. He is currently a Senior Director at Willis Towers Watson, a global professional services firm. His background in Organisational Psychology led him into a career as an HR consultant, working with large UK and global clients on projects typically focusing on employee motivation, employee engagement and organisational culture.
He has consulted at Board level on how to measure and change company culture, identify drivers of employee motivation, and evaluate the behavioural drivers of business performance. A project for a global financial services organisation established a programme to measure its culture, delivering a regular series of metrics to its Board, and helping to create a more transparent and inclusive work environment. A project for a global law firm measured the impact of its programme to improve the retention of its female associates.
Nick’s experience in developing a deep understanding of behavioural drivers within organisations has combined with his fast-growing interest in issues of sustainability. His work at the GSI will therefore seek to identify the challenges associated with creating new patterns of pro-environmental personal behaviour, within the context of an organisation’s cultural norms and commercial priorities. It is expected to draw on and combine insight from the disciplines of Behavioural, Environmental and Organisational Psychology.
Ian Wilkinson
Dr Ian Wilkinson joined the GSI as a Visiting Fellow in April 2019 to pursue opportunities for publication, research and collaboration on the sustainable intensification in agriculture, with a particular interest in optimising the sustainability of small mixed farms.
Ian gained an honours degree in Applied Zoology with Agriculture and a PhD in insecticide resistance, both from Reading University. He went on to work for many years in research and consultancy, mostly in transport technology, helping national governments and the European Commission explore innovative ways of managing demand for road transport. During this time he also created and ran a series of businesses, latterly consulting on the role of corporate purpose in business performance. He is a former Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, Member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and Fellow of the Institute of Consulting.
In 2018 Ian gained a Masters in Sustainability from Anglia Ruskin University, completing a dissertation project on farmer identity and its relationship to pro-environmental behaviour. Subsequently he joined the RSPB to lead a research study into farmer attitudes to wildlife friendly farming and agri-environment scheme engagement. Currently he is helping to research cultural ecosystem services provided by the Celtic Rainforests of Wales as part of an EU-LIFE funded environmental restoration programme.
Linda Wood
Linda is Director and Founder of Change The Law Ltd which was set up in 2004. It is a company limited by guarantee. The company works to contribute to the observance throughout the world of human rights as set out in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (UDHR). She works to promote human rights as set out in the UDHR and subsequent United Nations conventions and declarations and in regional codes of human rights which incorporate the rights contained in the UDHR and those subsequent conventions and declarations, throughout the world. From 2012 she has been providing consultancy to business around the UN Guiding Principles on human rights and working closely with organisations such as the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
Linda is progressing some of the global challenges of embedding business and human rights into law and business practice. This includes, where possible, all of the Sustainable Development Goals.