I'm an explorer beneath the surface of the mundane, sharing some of the stories I find.

My adventures have taken me across my home isles of Britain and Ireland and mainland Europe; also India, Africa, the Americas and most lately New Zealand. I've worked as a parliamentary and university researcher, a journalist and author, a documentary film maker, an educator and a UN consultant.

I come from a home steeped in arts, exploration and politics. Growing up in the house where Peter Pan was written, I have been privileged to touch the magic of life. Not five foot high, asthmatic and the youngest of six, I find common cause with the underdog.

Entranced by the wild, I went on the road on excaping school, then knuckled down to study science: Human Sciences (BSc Hons), Science and Technology policy (MSc) at the University of Sussex.  Complex systems lured me, and I studied in depth at Santa Fe Institute. Other courses I've completed include permaculture design, investigative journalism, shamanism and participatory video. I've worked with movements for human ecology, free software and institutional accountability, with groups from Earth First! to the Tax Justice Network and beyond.

Governance of global environmental finance was the focus of a major research projet in the late 1990s. My acclaimed book A New Green Order? (2002, Pluto Press)  concluded that pricing nature is a political act taken at the expense of the evolving systems on which our species depends. This perspective gained only a few supporters at the time, but is unfortunately supported more each day as climates change and biodiversity transforms.

I was a director of Conscious Cinema, producing seminal grassroots and international documentaries at the turn of the millennium; also running weekend wrkshops for underground video makers in the UK. My films and footage have appeared on rickety projectors in the jungle, on TV, online, in the National Film Theatre, in art exhibitions like What can you do with the City and Cultural Hijack and at film festivals like the Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Film. 

I have been interviewed by Channel 4 News and by the comedian Stewart Lee. I've addressed research conferences, published in scholarly journals like Environmental Politics, and magazines like Mute, Down to Earth and the Times Literary Supplement. 

Consultancy clients include universities, charities, United Nations agencies; ITN, Tax Justice Network, Friends of the Earth International, Cornerhouse, Action Aid, Eurodad, Warwick Business School, IIED, SOSYWEN and more.

My experimental video aggregator at IFIWatch.TV (now superceded by social media platforms) was created in association with the Transmission network  and the Bretton Woods Project.

I'm a Fellow of the Schumacher Institute Research, participant in the Just Conservation network and a director of the nascent BankWatch UK.

I speak at universities, in festivals and in the Earth Activist Training UK.  I run tours and host visitors in a magical Wiltshire retreat and have been helping to birth a Light Valleys stream in the Dark Mountain Project. I am starting to develop educational materials with the Witchcraft and Human Rights Network, and am working on a photopoem about my ancestral pilgrimage to New Zealand in early 2013.

I remain open to (paid) consulting offers and speaking gigs.

Zoe means 'Life', in Greek.

Awards

2005: “Misty” Award for ‘Best Embedded’ video activist.

2002: Paris film festival for 'Voces Argentinas'

1993: Sasakawa scholarship for young people with leadership promise.