Author and Professor of Environment and Society
[New website coming soon!]
Posts: The Climate Chronicles
002: Koans and Stories for the Climate and Nature Crises
003 Count the Stars in the Sky
008 The Fan is Broken, Bring Me the Black Hound
009 An Ancient Tree, Older Than the Forest It Stands In
100 The Next Dawn of Everything [Guest Blog @ ClimateCultures]
Sea Sagas of the North and The Low-Carbon Good Life
Positions
Director, Centre for Public and Policy Engagement, University of Essex
Chair, Essex Climate Action Commission
Senior Associate Scientist, Stefansson Arctic Institute, Iceland
Deputy Lieutenant, Essex Lieutenancy
President, Essex Wildlife Trust
Fellow, WWF-UK
Fellow, Global Evergreening Alliance
Chair, External Advisory Board, USAID SIIL, Kansas State University
Host of Louder than Words podcast series and Brighter Futures films shorts: “ideas that improve lives”
My Work
Research
Stories, sagas, place: tales of place and identity; tales of hope
Nature and health, green exercise and low carbon good life
Sustainability in agricultural and food systems
Consumption patterns, the climate crisis, the good life and well-being
Blue-green regeneration at the coast and seaside, on islands, at sea; evidence of renewal and regeneration.
Positions
I am Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex, and Director of the Centre for Public and Policy Engagement.
I am host of the podcast Louder Than Words and the film shorts series Brighter Futures.
I am President of the Essex Wildlife Trust, Fellow of WWF-UK, Chair of the External Advisory Board for the Sustainable Intensification Lab at Kansas State University, Fellow of the Evergreening Alliance.
Socials & externals
You can follow social media postings on story and sagas, climate crisis, the good life, and on nature and wellbeing @julespretty1
I am in the World Top 0.1% of Highly-Cited Authors.
I am Chair of the Essex Climate Action Commission (ECAC), and Chair of the Essex Renewal Project.
I give regular talks on the climate crisis, on hope and kindness, on stories, on the journey to zero carbon, drawing on my two most recent books, Sea Sagas of the North and The Low-Carbon Good Life
About Jules Pretty
I am based at the borders of the counties of Suffolk and Essex in eastern England.
My sole-authored books include The Low-Carbon Good Life (2023), Sea Sagas of the North (2022), The East Country (2017), The Edge of Extinction (2014), This Luminous Coast (2011), The Earth Only Endures (2007), Agri-Culture (2002) and Regenerating Agriculture (1995). The Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture (2018) was co-written with Zareen Bharucha, Ecocultures (2014) co-edited with Zareen Bharucha and Steffen Bohm, and Nature and Culture (2011) co-edited with Sarah Pilgrm.
I am former Deputy-Chair of the government’s Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, and served on advisory committees for BBSRC and the Royal Society. I presented the BBC Radio 4 series Ploughing Eden, was contributor and writer for the BBC TV Correspondent programme The Magic Bean, and panellist in 2007 for Radio 4’s The Moral Maze. I received a 1997 award from the Indian Ecological Society, was appointed A D White Professor-at-Large by Cornell University (2001-07), and am Chief & Founding Editor of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. I was awarded an OBE in 2006 for services to sustainable agriculture, an honorary degree from Ohio State University in 2009, and the British Science Association Presidential Medal (Agriculture and Food) in 2015. I was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Essex in 2023.
Get in Touch
If you would like copies of papers or articles, please do send a message (using this form, DM or write directly by email), and I will send pdfs back by email.
Jules Pretty 