facultyexplore advaya’s teachers
Explore advaya's faculty of teachers, scientists, practitioners, philosophers and storytellers, who share multidimensional, local and diverse narratives from across the world.
Bayo Akomolafe
Sophie Strand
Satish Kumar
Vandana Shiva
Veronica Strang
Manda Scott
Beloved Sara Zaltash
David Abram
Dr Andreas Weber
David Whyte
Helena Norberg-Hodge
Dr. Predrag Slijepcevic
Charles Eisenstein
Aisha Paris Smith
Brontë Velez
Gita Parihar
Gita was Head of Legal at Friends of the Earth until July 2016 and has spent 12 years working with and for campaigning organisations, using her skills as a solicitor to bring environmental cases and advise at international negotiations on issues like climate change.
Alongside her legal work, Gita is passionate about exploring approaches to saving the planet that sustain us as human beings. Gita is a trustee of the UKYCC and the Climate Justice Fund and currently studying for an MA in Spirituality and Ecology at Schumacher college.
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Climate justice: identity, history and power
Part II of The Regenerative Activism Series. Participants: Gita Parihar, Hiba Ahmad (Our Future Now), Nick Dearden (Global Justice Now), Sheila Menon (Ulex Project & Plane Stupid), Rachel Kennerley (Friends of the Earth). The climate crisis is as much about power and politics as it is about the environment. This session explores the challenges involved in ensuring climate justice and designing a just transition beyond our carbon-belching system for all communities and workers. How can we achieve the changes required in a way that promotes justice and equality by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing the historic oppression of frontline and vulnerable communities and countries? How can we ensure that the structural transformation required doesn’t strengthen the hand of those who already use their power to exploit and oppress? Understanding the power dynamics of race, class, gender and our economic and political systems – both locally and globally – are crucial to building a climate justice movement. It involves reconstructing our identities, building renewed understanding of our histories, and re-forging our socio-political relationships.
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Rights of nature: law & the more-than-human
Arguably, the view that humans are at the centre of things, above and superior to all that is non-human, is one of the fundamental flaws at the heart of our dysfunctional civilisation. And yet so much of our society is grounded in this assumption. In various ways, these speakers are all working at the edge of our understanding of agency, personhood and the extension of legal and cultural frameworks to embrace a fuller understanding of who we are and our relationship to nature. What might society and our legal system look like when we recognise rivers as sacred, forests as an aspect of our own breathing, and humans as plain members of the earth community? Where do such worldviews already exist? How might a radical shift in our society that redefines what it is to have sentience change our culture and translate into concrete frameworks for protecting and asserting the rights of nature? Participants: Gita Parihar, Carlotta Byrne, Shivali Fulchand, Paul Powlesland and Laura Guarch.
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Global movements: power, resource & resilience
Part 3 of Regenerative Activism 2021. Movement-building is alliance-building and this is particularly true in the case of environmental activism. This session explores the multi-layered response of global environmental movements to the complex series of threats that affect all who inhabit this planet.
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NGO panel on Regenerative Activism
NGO Panel Discussion held at the Advaya event Regenerative Activism: Revitalising Self and Society. Moderated by Gita Parihar. With NGOs War on Want, AVAAZ, Friends of the Earth, and Transition Towns. The event is an exploration of tools and approaches that can transform our activism into a source for flourishing, both individually and socially. Those of us involved in social change are all too familiar with the challenge of meeting injustice and hardship in the world. Our aim is to explore a range of tools and approaches, collective and personal, to make our activism more effective and sustainable. We will look at the personal and inner dimensions, as well as the interpersonal and organisational factors that enable long term engagement and continuity in the struggles we face. We hope to understand how our work for social change can be a context for flourishing, both individually and socially. We will explore these issues using holistic and participatory methods, drawing on popular education, ecological and systems thinking, as well as reflective practices. The day will bring together leading activists and change makers from across the UK and beyond, to share practice and strengthen networks.