Shaun Chamerlin
Since 2005 Shaun has devoted himself full-time to exploring the dominant cultural stories and ‘myths’ that chart the course for our society and, in particular, how we might change direction before we end up where we are headed. His efforts have been covered across the UK press, including by the BBC, Guardian, Sunday Times, Independent and Daily Express, as well as internationally by Time magazine, Bloomberg News and the Financial Times.
He is managing director of the Fleming Policy Centre, and has been involved with the Transition Network since its inception, leading to his co-founding Transition Town Kingston and authoring the movement’s second book, The Transition Timeline, in 2009.
Perhaps his proudest achievement is having shepherded the late David Fleming’s extraordinary, award-winning Lean Logic and Surviving the Future to posthumous publication. In light of their growing popularity, he then led the “Community, Place and Play: A Post-Market Economics” course at Schumacher College, and acted as executive producer on the 2019 film The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?
Shaun was also one of the earliest Extinction Rebellion arrestees, in 2018, and has previously served as chair of the Ecological Land Co-operative, a director of the campaigning organisation Global Justice Now, Chelsea Green Publishing’s commissioning editor for the UK/Europe and an advisor to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, as well as co-authoring the All Party Parliamentary report into carbon rationing.
Shaun’s writing roams across social, political and spiritual themes, as well as popular explanations of climate, energy and ecological issues, and has found homes from online platforms openDemocracy, The Oil Drum and The Huffington Post to print magazines such as Tikkun, The Ecologist, STIR, Kosmos and Resurgence, as well as academic publications such as the Solutions and Carbon Management peer-reviewed journals (including the most-read paper in the history of the latter).
Over the course of his work, Shaun has delivered presentations at venues ranging from community groups, Rebellions, Climate Camps and Occupations to the London School of Economics, the UK and Scottish Parliaments and the European Commission, and has been shortlisted for the Sheila McKechnie Foundation Environmental Campaigner Award as well as, locally, being named Kingston’s ‘Green Champion’ by the council and Kingston Guardian newspaper.
Shaun has also edited or contributed chapters to a diverse collection of books, from Grow Small, Think Beautiful (Floris Books), The Future We Deserve (PediaPress) and Low Impact Living Communities (Diggers and Dreamers) to What We Are Fighting For (Pluto Press), The Moneyless Manifesto (Permanent Publications) and two of the Dark Mountain books.
