Indendent Researcher (UK)

Louise Carver

Dr Louise Carver trained as a human geographer and political ecologist exploring how governance, knowledge, politics and technologies shape the interactions between environment and society. Her transdisciplinary work follows critical questions of value and valuation in the green and blue economy, specifically in relation to biodiversity. She works across research, policy and contemporary arts and culture settings, bringing these together while bridging science and society for real world challenges. 

Louise completed her PhD in 2017 at the University of London following an institutional ethnography of the valuation of biodiversity in conservation policy. She follows the myriad and often contested efforts to find ways of negotiating plural value systems in efforts to define, measure, defend the values of nature. Her work is informed by the environmental humanities, decolonial political ecology, science and technology studies and feminist economic geography including the diverse or community economies perspectives.Louise publishes peer reviewed journal articles, experimental essays and co-edited the book The Aquarium is a Listening Glass  (Humboldt Books). She also organises experimental public programmes, workshops and participatory interventions. She has been a Fellow in the UK Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology, advises multilateral and UN agencies on the blue economy, and was a Senior Research Associate at Lancaster University. Louise is currently leading a trans-disciplinary programme on Convivial Marine Conservation with arts and advocacy platform TBA21 Academy with their partners in Jamaica. She is a founding member of the Convivial Conservation Centre, based at Wageningen University, with a global network of partners reimagining conservation science, practice and economy in the 21st Century. 

Harokopio University of Athens (Greece)

Evangelia Drakou

Evangelia Drakou is Assistant Professor at the Geography Department of Harokopio University of Athens in Greece. Her expertise lies in mapping and assessment of Ecosystem Services within coastal and marine ecosystems, landscape and seascape ecology, with a special interest on transitional ecosystems such as the coastal zone, and small and medium islands. She previously worked for University of Twente (NL), University of Brest (FR), the Joint Research Center of the European Commission and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

University of Palermo (Italy)

Gianluca Sarà

Gianluca Sarà (PhD 1994) is a Full Professor of Ecology and coordinates the Ecology Laboratory at the University of Palermo, Italy. Together with his team, he explores the effects of variability induced by human-caused environmental change on the ecological responses of organisms in marine habitats and its influences on community dynamics, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. He is the co-PI of SPOKE 1 – SEA (NBFC, PNRR Next Generation-EU), member of the Italian Ministry of Research (MUR), of the EU-Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030” and CLUSTER 6 Italy for Horizon Europe (MUR) Expert Panels. He has been PI or co-PI of more than 15 international competitive projects (Interreg, Horizon EU, Australian Research Council, Hong Kong Research Grants Council, PRIN, PNRA). He spent more three years as a visiting fellow at Universities of Hong Kong (CN), Adelaide (AUS), Columbia (SC, USA), Kuala Terrenganu (MY) and Boston (MS, USA); is an Adjunct Full Professor (2024-2026) at the Ocean University (CN). He is the author of more than 220 in peer-reviewed scientific journals and of an Ecology textbook (Pusceddu, Sarà, Viaroli 2020 – Ecology. UTET).

University of Strathclyde (UK)

Francesco Sindico

Francesco Sindico is a Professor of International Environmental Law at the University of Strathclyde Law School. He is the Director of the Climate Change Legal Initiative (C2LI), the Co-Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law Climate Change Specialist Group (where he leads the Islands, Nature and Renewable Energy Project (INREP) and the Co-Chair of the I International Water Resources Association (IWRA) Islands Water Congress. From September 2021 to April 2024 he was seconded to the Scottish Government where he led the Carbon Neutral Islands project.

Francesco thrives in multidisciplinary and multipartner projects and environments. He brings passion and competence to his work on International Environmental Law and is always keen to learn more and develop new partnerships. Francesco is an academic who believes universities need to work with non-academic partners and share results from their research also in ways that will deliver real impact on the ground. 

Indendent Researcher (UK)

Deborah Rowan Wright

Deborah Rowan Wright has worked in marine conservation for 20 years, specialising in ocean conservation policy. Her work on marine renewable energy, ocean governance reform, and conservation law has been published by among others, the International Whaling Commission, the Marine Biological Association, the Ecologist, and the University of Chicago Press.  

Since 2012, Deborah has been calling for neglected international law to be enforced in order to protect the whole global ocean from human harm (and not only 30 percent of it). In her book ‘de’ she presents the case for 100 percent ocean protection and describes how to achieve it.

Based in Bristol in the UK, Deborah is currently working on the twin campaigns to pass a UN Declaration of Ocean Rights and for Ecocide to be recognized as the 5th International Crime.