Conscious Planet Symposium Day

Carl researches the pitfalls and promises of the Information Age. His interests include politics and technology, cybercrime, war, journalism, the rise of the hackers, the threat of hate speech, the effects of automation and how social and political power is changing. Carl is an author, speaker and researcher at Demos, a think tank based in London, where he co-founded the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) in 2012. Miller’s book, The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab, analyses power in the digital age.

 Chris is a scientist, author and award-winning wildlife artist, and lectures biology at the University of Oxford where he holds the position of Deputy Director and Head of Science at the Botanic Garden. Chris is interested in how the living world can inform technological applications from floating solar panels inspired by waterlily leaves to microfluidics informed by carnivorous plant surfaces. His latest book “Pathless Forest” describes the author’s quest to find and save Rafflesia, the world’s largest flower.

Kenneth is the deputy executive editor at The Economist. He is the co-author of “Framers” on the power of mental models and limits of AI, and “Big Data,” a NYT bestseller, with Oxford Internet Institute’s Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. Previously Kenneth was a foreign correspondent in Europe, Asia and America, a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a board director of Chatham House, and an associate fellow at Oxford’s Saïd Business School. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Willem is a British/Dutch scientist, teacher and author, the Principal Investigator of the University of Oxford Mindfulness Research Centre, and Director of the University of Oxford Mindfulness Research Centre. Willem is widely recognized for his research on preventing depression, promoting mental health, and flourishing across the lifespan. His latest book “Mindfulness for Life” examines what it means to live well, and to be the change we want to see in this world.

Nayanika is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. She is the author, most recently, of Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene which retells the story of predatory big cats in India through a centring of the climate crisis.

Hot Poets is an award-winning internationally-focused CIC bringing poetry and science together to tell stories that matter and inspire climate action that works.  Their mission is to powerfully communicate climate science, support a just green transition across sectors, work towards narrative shifts in education and culture and generate wide-scale creative participation projects that lead to profound behaviour change for millions of people. With poetry!