Celia Deane-Drummond began her academic career in the natural sciences, focusing on plant physiology and agricultural botany, particularly the biochemistry of nitrogen nutrition in plants and the biophysics of ion transport across plant cell membranes using novel tracers. The global and ethical challenges of the use of GMOs encouraged her to retrain in theology, education, and environmental ethics. 

As Director of the Laudato Si' Research Institute, she leads the multidisciplinary research work of the Institute, develops and fosters its collaborative partnerships and projects, including those with the church and other allied organisations. She is also responsible for LSRI's strategic plan for growth and promotes its education and outreach work nationally and internationally.  

Austen Ivereigh is a Fellow in Contemporary Church History at Campion Hall, Oxford, a biographer of Pope Francis and a writer and speaker on contemporary church affairs. Inspired by Laudato Sì he lives on a small regenerative farm in Herefordshire which he writes about in a column in The Tablet called ‘Wild Faith’. He drew on his D.Phil. from St Antony’s College, Oxford, in 1993 — which was published as Catholicism and Politics in Argentina, 1810-1960 (MacMillan 1994) — for his biography of Pope Francis, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope (Allen & Unwin, 2015), which was followed by Wounded Shepherd: Pope Francis and the Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church (Henry Holt, 2019). He also collaborated with Pope Francis on his Let Us Dream: the Path to a Better Future: in conversation with Austen Ivereigh (Simon & Schuster, 2020). His website is austeni.org and he tweets as @austeni. 

Tim completed his doctorate in 2018 at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professor Graham Ward. His thesis examined the concept of the Anthropocene as it has been explored within recent continental philosophy and religion. He is currently preparing a monograph to be published with Edinburgh University Press entitled “The Political Theology of Bruno Latour”. Tim has taught on various courses in the University and elsewhere, including on topics related to theological anthropology, political theology and environmental ethics. His current research focuses on how the discipline of Earth System Science might contribute new methodologies and new ways of thinking to the humanities, including theology. His passion is to understand how all these resources might help us hear the “the cry of the Earth” and “the cry of the poor”, as indicated in the 2015 papal encyclical Laudato Si’.

In addition to these research interests, Tim is Assistant Director for Research Programming at the Laudato Si’ Research Institute at Campion Hall. He is responsible for the development and management of new research grants, the Institute’s visitor and affiliate programme, and academic events.

Fr Rob Taylerson is currently Spiritual Director and lecturer in Spirituality at St Mary’s College, Oscott. He also lectures in Spirituality for the Maryvale Institute.  He is an author on Spirituality topics for the Catholic Truth Society.

 Fr Taylerson is Rural Adviser to the Archbishop of Birmingham. Previously he has been a trustee for the Arthur Rank Centre (Ecumenical Rural Ministry Charity) and is currently on the editorial board of their magazine, “Country Way”.  He has been involved with others in the planning and running of the sixteen “Catholic and Rural” Conferences in the UK which have taken place over the last twenty Years.  His extensive pastoral work includes city, market town, and rural parishes.

 His previous agricultural career includes working as a junior soil scientist (at Rothamsted), soil analyst and adviser (for Kent County Council), and lecturing posts in Agriculture and allied subjects at the Kent College of Agriculture (Hadlow), and at the Warwickshire College of Agriculture (Moreton Morrell).

Simon started his political activism in the French MRJC (Movement of Rural Young Christians) on agricultural and youth participation topics. Today, chairs the Agroecology and Sustainability Working Commission for MIJARC Europe (International Movement of Catholic Agricultural and Rural Youth).

Norman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke Divinity School. Raised on a farm in Southern Alberta, Norman went on to study history at the University of Lethbridge, theology at Yale University Divinity School, and philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. His current work focuses on understanding and promoting practices that can equip both rural and urban church communities to be more faithful and responsible members of creation. Norman lectures frequently in Canada, the United States, and Europe. He serves as general editor for the book series Culture of the Land: A Series in the New Agrarianism, published by the University Press of Kentucky, and is co-founder and executive committee member of the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology. He is the father of four children and is married to Gretchen Ziegenhals.

Matthew Philipp Whelan, 2022 Visiting Fellow at the LSRI, is Assistant Professor of Moral Theology in the Honors Program at Baylor University, where his research centres on Catholic social teaching, Latin American and liberation theologies, and ecological theology and ethics. Besides offering courses on these subjects, he also teaches on scripture, church history, Christian theology and ethics, and both ancient and medieval great texts.

Matthew’s scholarship is informed by his years working with farming communities in Central America, as well as his involvement in COMPARTE (Spanish for “Share”), a Jesuit-affiliated network of learning and action that works with producer organizations and other social actors to envision and embody alternatives to dominant models of development. He is an avid gardener and composter, and he and his wife Natalie have three daughters.

Sr Margaret is a Canoness of St Augustine in the community at Boarbank Hall in Cumbria. She was a Senior Lecturer in Theology at Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds. She has particular interests in virtue ethics, in the ethics of healthcare and of the environment, and in St Augustine.

The Community at Boarbank Hall are trying to do their bit for the planet, in collaboration with their staff, through food-growing, gardening for wildlife, and a range of energy conservation and waste reduction measures.

Matt Williams is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader (MA) in Charity Management at St Mary's University, Twickenham. He is also a founding board member of Jubilee Farm in Northern Ireland as well as international co-ordinator for Chilida Community Based Organisation in Malawi. 

Matt did his doctoral research at Durham University with John Barclay, where he wrote a thesis on Socio-Economic Ethics in the Gospel of John. He has published academically in biblical studies as well as speaking and writing on numerous topics around poverty, environment and politics from the perspective of relational thinking. He lives near Cambridge with his family and is part of the local church there.