Meet the team

Having founded St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in 1993, Rt Revd & Rt Hon Richard Chartres continues his association with the Centre as honorary Life President.

The Rt Rev & Rt Hon The Lord Chartres GCVO, Baron Chartres, KCVO, ChStJ, PC, FSA is a retired bishop of the Church of England. He was area Bishop of Stepney from 1992 to 1995 and Bishop of London from 1995 to 2017. He was sworn of the Privy Council in the same year he became Bishop of London. He was also Gresham Professor of Divinity from 1987 to 1992. In October 2017, Chartres was made a Life Peer, and he now sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher; he had previously sat in the House as one of the Lords Spiritual.

Justin Portal Welby is the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior bishop in the Church of England. Welby was the vicar of Southam, Warwickshire, and most recently was the Bishop of Durham, serving for just over a year. As Archbishop of Canterbury, he is the Primate of All England and the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Welby’s early career was in the oil industry. In 1989, he studied for ordination at St John’s College, Durham. After several parochial appointments he became the Dean of Liverpool in 2007 and the Bishop of Durham in 2011.

Welby’s theology is reported as representing the evangelical tradition within Anglicanism. Having worked in business before his ordination, some of his publications explore the relationship between finance and religion and, as a member of the House of Lords, he sits on the panel of the 2012 Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.

Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth PC FBA FRSL FLSW is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, Metropolitan of the Province of Canterbury and Primate of All England, offices he held from December 2002 to December 2012. He was previously the Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, making him the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England.

Williams spent much of his earlier career as an academic at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford successively. He speaks three languages and reads at least nine.

Vincent Gerard Nichols is an English cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. He previously served as Archbishop of Birmingham from 2000 to 2009.

On 22 February 2014, Pope Francis admitted Nichols to the Sacred College of Cardinals at a general consistory.

Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner was born in London and brought up in an Orthodox synagogue, moving to the Reform Movement in her teens in order to be more active in services and in communal life.

After her degree in Christianity, she moved to Jerusalem where she lived for 14 years. Rabbi Laura worked in education in Israel, with Jews at the Machon, the Institute for Youth Leaders from Abroad and at Melitz, where she worked as the Director of the Centre for Christian Encounters with Israel and in training Israeli-Palestinian dialogue facilitators and Palestinian tour guides in Bethlehem. Rabbi Laura has post-graduate degrees in Community Centre Management from the Hebrew University and an MA in Jewish communal service and education from Brandeis University, Massachusetts. She worked at Alyth (North Western Reform Synagogue) from 2003 until 2011.

Laura previously was a Senior Rabbi to the Movement for Reform Judaism

The Rt Rev and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advisor for Reconciliation. This role has a particular emphasis on supporting the Anglican Church in contexts of violent conflict or post-conflict and helping the Church to be an agent of reconciliation and conflict-transformation. A theologian who specialises in Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, Sarah brings wide-ranging international experience of peace-building and dialogue.

Gwen Burnyeat is a British anthropologist and writer based in Colombia and the UK. She is the author of ‘Chocolate, Politics and Peace-Building: ‘An Ethnography of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia’, and producer and co-director of award-winning ethnographic documentary ‘Chocolate of Peace’ (2016, www.chocolateofpeace.com).

Gwen has worked in Colombia for over eight years, including with the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and with Peace Brigades International (PBI). She has written a political analysis on Colombia for the London Review of Books, the LRB Blog, and for Latin America Bureau: http://lab.org.uk/gwen-burnyeats-colombia-blog/, and is a member of transnational civil society network Rodeemos el Diálogo.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/people/research-students/Gwen-Burnyeat

Bruna Kadletz is a facilitator, writer and the co-founder of Circles of Hospitality, a Brazilian non-profit organisation whose work lies in reclaiming a culture of peace and deep hospitality in times of polarisation and intolerance against refugees and immigrants.
Bruna holds an MSc in Sociology and Global Change from the University of Edinburgh, with a focus on forced displacement and climate change.

She has visited and worked with displaced communities in dozens of countries around the planet. In 2017, Bruna had the honour to address the Scottish Parliament, calling for more action concerning the refugee plight in Europe. Currently, she is participating in a documentary directed by Alan Gilsenan, an Irish filmmaker, which will feature at RTE.

https://www.brunakadletz.com/ 

Though British by birth, Zoe left the UK when she was just 9 months old and grew up in Asia, living predominantly in The Philippines and Nepal. Living and travelling overseas exposed her to a variety of religious traditions and world-views, places of extraordinary natural beauty. These experiences of awe became a source of guidance in her life.

Zoe holds a 1st class degree in South Asian Studies and the Study of Religions from SOAS. Recently she has been working with her partner to create an independent magazine cum journal called Inherited. Inherited examines our connection to the natural world, the responsibilities we have towards it, and the joy it can bring to our lives.

Sophie is an Associate Fellow of St Ethelburga’s Centre, and an alumnus of our Spiritual Ecology Leadership Programme. As a gentle and wild soul, Sophie grew up in the southern forests of Wallonia. At the age of 19, she moved to Berlin, where she finished her studies in Philosophy and Moral Sciences. During that period, she practiced and lived for two years in a Korean Zen Buddhist center.

Currently, her home is based in Brussels, where she is starting an interreligious permaculture garden in Molenbeek. Through this project, she wants to welcome people from diverse spiritual and cultural backgrounds to exchange about collective sorrows and hopes, explore interrelations between permaculture and spirituality and deepen their relations to the land and to each other.

Beth is an Associate Fellow of St Ethelburga’s Centre and an alumnus of their Spiritual Ecology Leadership Programme. She is the founder of Roots into Reverence, an initiative that leads pilgrimages in Britain whose destinations are sacred celebrations inside churches.

Beth closely assisted in the initiation and running of Wild Church, which is a roaming pilgrim’s church whose altars are atop of tors, beside rivers or under the canopy of trees. She has recently moved from Devon to Edinburgh where she is working as an assistant to adults with learning disabilities at L’Arche and is deeply grateful for such a joyful and loving place of work.

Rabiah studied western Herbal Medicine at the University of Westminster and has been a qualified herbalist since 2008. After her degree, she travelled to Ghana, where her time spent with a local traditional herbalist re-ignited her love for nature, with an understanding of the symbiotic relationship between nature, humans and spirituality.

In 2010, she co-founded ‘The Rabbani Project’ a not for profit community collective dedicated to the exploration of creativity, nature and spirituality. Rabiah is also a musician and has performed across the UK and Europe with the group ‘Pearls of Islam’.

Matti Spence is an Eco-poet, approaching the genre from a visionary perspective, largely influenced by his Zen Buddhist practice. Exploring body/land connections through formal and thematic experimentation, a key area of his work is to understand the path of the poet as an archetypal one, investigating how such an approach to creativity might exist in society today, through a process of deep listening, sharing and a sense of serving the environment through art.

Matti has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and has spent the last year as poet-in-residence for Monkton Wyld Community, a centre for sustainable living in West Dorset.

Hina Khalid is a Theology and Religious studies graduate from Cambridge, and is particularly interested in religious mysticism and the role of religious language in capturing something of the infinite. As a Muslim, Hina is committed to the values of standing with the oppressed and fostering the ethic of love and humility in a deeply fractured world. She has previously worked on peace building programs, with a particular focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Hina is passionate about understanding people’s narratives and working alongside others so that our differences may empower, and not undermine, us in our fight for social justice and equality. Hina takes a keen interest in current affairs and is starting an MPhil in October this year – focusing on Islamic and Christian mystical discourse of the ‘divine feminine’.

Anahita is a management consultant in the technology sector where she dedicates her time to helping individuals and organisations to become educated, ethical, and aware of their full potential to embrace change in the workplace and life. She also promotes cultural transformation using modern training and coaching methods.

During the last few years, she has partaken in various leadership programmes that aim to make a positive change in society.
Her passion lies in helping displaced victims of war and uncertainty by delivering essential education that supports their emotional and intellectual development.

Caitilin is a social researcher, humanitarian worker and activist.
Since completing her degrees in Global Development Studies at Queen’s University in Canada and Migration Studies at Oxford University, Caitilin has worked with displaced communities around the world. Caitilin has been involved with St Ethelburga’s People of the Earth Programme, helping lead and shape community workshops and travelling to Greece in response to the refugee crisis.

Caitilin has contributed in numerous projects through her work. For instance, she once spearheaded an innovative integration project in Tower Hamlets, London’s most impoverished neighbourhood, working with over 300 newly-arrived migrant women each year to support social inclusion and develop the necessary experience and skills to build their lives in the UK.

Ciara grew up on the west coast of Ireland, in a native speaking and ecologically diverse village. In recent years, she has begun to reconnect with the land in an attempt to understand the indigenous knowledge and ancient magic it holds, hoping that an understanding of this knowledge can help us in the current ecological crisis.

She is qualified in Sustainable Horticulture and Permaculture from Kinsale College and
has a passion for biodiversity conservation. This is reflected in her garden designs, where earth care comes first and the overarching aim is to help people reignite their appreciation and fascination with the natural world.

She is currently studying Social and Therapeutic Horticulture with Coventry University,
where her research has shown her the myriad of health and well-being benefits of
nature connection for vulnerable people within society. This research engages with the
science behind the therapeutic power of connecting with the earth, and has emboldened
her to continue her work with both people, and the land.

Nádúr Naofa (meaning sacred nature in the irish language), is the name of her nature
connection workshops series which she runs periodically, each one looking at a
different aspect of our connection with nature.

Anya Gleizerʼs practice, led at an interface between art and biology, explores the relationship between human culture and the natural world. However, at its heart, the boundary that allows this binary to persist, blurs and starts to slip. Gleizer explores themes of interior and exterior wilderness through performance and installation. Her art involves the participation of multiple performers and audience-members, calling for a full involvement with the work.

Born in Russia, and brought up in New York City, Gleizer has travelled extensively for her research, from Alaska, to Japan, to the heart of Siberia. She has worked with indigenous communities across Russia, circumnavigated Lake Baikal by kayak, worked with wolves and moose on Lake Superior, and monitored arctic shorebirds in Chukotka.

Faced with the dwindling of wilderness and wildness in watersheds, collapsing ecosystems or in our own human minds, Gleizer works towards a radical reframing of our relationship to the natural world with her art as her compass. Her performances search for traces of wilderness in the actualization of ancient mythologies, in the lived tradition of indigenous peoples and also in the ethos of roadside BurgerKings, the trappings and tatters of the cities – centers of our chaotic civilizations.

Sam Weatherald is a community builder, facilitator, musician and mental health activist, and alumni of the Spiritual Ecology fellowship 2018. He is Community Organiser at Sunday Assembly East End, which he helped found in 2016, a secular congregational community where he organises assemblies, hosts, and occasionally drums in the house band! He is also founder of grassroots participatory arts and events collective Antenna, which organises bespoke events supporting and celebrating grassroots London social change communities. His most recent major project was a ‘A Mindful Mess 2018’ a three-day community arts festival in Poplar exploring the mind, mental health and ‘neurodiversity’, funded by Tower Hamlets council, for which he also published an anthology of creative contributions from local people on the theme. Having experienced severe chronic depression for most of his twenties, he is passionately committed to exploring the deep cultural and spiritual roots of disconnection and alienation which have led to the growing mental health crisis.

Declan is a vulnerable anthropologist, activist and nature-connection facilitator. He is an Associate Fellow of St Ethelburga’s Centre and an alumnus of the Deep Adaptation Programme.

He holds a First Class BA (Hons) in International Relations and Political Theory, and an MA in Anthropology of Development & Social Change, as well as a Certificate in Participatory Methods from the Institute of Development Studies. He has also worked on and supported grassroots community projects in East Africa, Guatemala, Spain and the UK.

Through his previous work in international peacebuilding, Declan has learnt the great importance of intimacy and bearing witness to build and re-build communities – even after the most extreme violence. His current work is focused on offering heartfelt spaces to process grief and trauma related to engaged social and environmental work.

He can offer workshops and trainings in deep listening, trauma recovery, and self-compassion as tools for social change. Through his writing, Declan seeks to bring more vulnerability into academia and authorship. Since participating in the St Ethelburga’s Deep Adaptation Programme, he is honing his trainings to support community resilience in a time of climate breakdown.

Mungo is a professional NO HANDS® massage therapist, budding natural farmer, and B&Breakfaster, with greening fingers and a yen for wildness.

Associate Fellow Project:

‘Sole: Reconnecting with Mystery’
A week-long residential working retreat in the wilding heart of Cheshire asking:
Why are we alive?
What is our wider context?
What happens when we offer curious and playful attention to the land and our embodied experience? 
What patterns are we a part of that nourish us?

This retreat is based on the sense is that a core cause of the current ecological crisis is a disconnect: from ourselves, from God, from each other, and from the natural world. So one of the invitations we offer is to reconnect, and to notice what it does  – physically, emotionally and spiritually. What is stirred up. What desires emerge. What fears. To welcome all that emerges – to be hospitable to all of experience: the good, the bad and the ugly.

These questions will be explored through land-work, imaginative contemplation, story, sensory-awareness exercises, nature-connection games, communal-living, and time spent alone on the land.

Mungo can offer a day-workshop version of the above retreat.

Sara Zaltash is a British-Iranian artist and Schumacher Institute Fellow evolving political, philosophical and spiritual realities. She is disarmingly personable, enchantingly direct and prone to radicalism. Out of popular movements, digital lives and ancient practices, Sara seeks frontiers, pioneers and revolutions.
“Zaltash is electrifying… See her if you can.” – The Guardian

Eddy Thacker, of Environmental Justice Rebellion, End Deportations, Plane Stupid and previously Grow Heathrow – Transition Heathrow. Eddy’s experience comes as a friend, comrade, campaigner, grower and facilitator within grassroots collectives and communities committed to alternative systems beyond the capitalist industrial growth society, a world without borders, a world without oppression. Eddy loves to hear ideas for connection and collaboration … scheming, being, creating with anyone who shares this vision for the world.

Maaike Boumans has been working as a host and trainer in the field of social and ecological justice for over 7 years. Her work is based on the premise that the challenges we are facing today are too complex to be solved by one person, organisation or sector alone. We need a radically different way of working together. Maaike focuses on creating learning spaces and facilitating the kind of conversations that allow diverse groups of people to move forward together on these complex challenges.

Together with her team at Bright Future Lab she trains students and teachers in sustainability and leadership. She writes and performs spoken word poetry, some of her work is published in the Deep Times Journal.

Maaike holds a MSc in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden. She is a trainer in the Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter and a great lover of powerful questions (and cake). Maaike is based just outside of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
www.maaikeboumans.com

Professor Joy Carter is Vice-Chancellor of The University of Winchester. She is an academic with research based in Geochemistry and Health and was a former President of the international society in her field.

Joy is the former Chair of GuildHE, and for many years served on the Universities UK Board  and has also chaired the Cathedrals Group of Universities and the Church of England’s Advisory Group for the Foundation for Educational Leadership, she is a Deputy Lieutenant for the county of Hampshire. Passionate about all aspects of sustainability and social justice.
Professor Carter was awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours in 2018 for services to Higher Education.

Manveer is committed to addressing the interconnected challenges of climate change and nature loss using the levers of finance and policy, and by taking a collaborative and stakeholder-led approach to interventions.

As Senior Manager of Sustainable Finance at CDP, an environmental NGO, Manveer oversees the creation of thought leadership and insights related to the environmental disclosures of financial institutions and their environmental transition plans. Prior to this he managed relationships with financial institutions based in the UK, assisting them in leveraging environmental data to drive real economy emissions reductions.

Julia Hoggett, CEO, London Stock Exchange plc
Julia Hoggett joined London Stock Exchange plc as CEO in April 2021.
Previously, Julia was at the Financial Conduct Authority as Director of Market Oversight, overseeing the conduct of market participants. Prior to this, she was a Managing Director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, running various fixed income origination businesses in EMEA. Julia was previously a Board Member and CEO of DEPFA ACS BANK in Ireland. She began her career at JPMorgan.
Julia holds a degree in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University and undertook a research scholarship at Kings College, Cambridge University on public policy in East Africa. Julia was included in Financial News’ 100 Most Influential Women in Europe’s Financial Markets (2010, 2011, 2012 and 2021) and the OUTstanding Top 50 (2013) and the Top 100 list (2014). Julia has been an active speaker on Diversity and Inclusion in the City for two decades.

Warwick became a Trustee in 2018 and brings to the Board his long and useful experience of central Government, having been a career civil servant for 28 years before taking early retirement. For 15 of those years he worked on religious engagement and supporting inter-faith dialogue, most recently as head of the Faith Communities Unit at the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, during which time he formed a strong commitment to the work of St Ethelburga’s which continues to this day. He is now Director of his own social enterprise, Faith in Society, which seeks to support faith groups wanting to play an active role in their local communities and public life.

Theo is a social entrepreneur, converting big ideas into reality. She has founded initiatives including renowned grassroots organisation Xenia, and ACT! A Festival for Social Change. Alongside this she provides consultancy for charities and social enterprise on their strategy and income development, using experience from years working in a range of settings including corporate partnerships, social policy, grant programme development, and volunteer sector capacity building.

Sophy has lived an eclectic life, having worked as an engineer and IT systems designer, psychotherapist, conflict facilitator and more. She played football in East London for twenty years. She was part of the team who created Transition Town Totnes, a catalysing project in the global Transition movement inspiring local community responses to major problems including resource depletion and climate change. She co-founded Transition Training, taking this model for collaborative action around the world. Her particular focus was to bring together insights from psychological, spiritual and wisdom traditions to a movement for change that often focused on outer themes.
Her work on Healthy Human Culture seeks to identify patterns of health and un-health in human societies. She leads Grief tending workshops, seeing that social technologies for honouring and healing pain and trauma are central in creating peaceful and joyful ways of living together.

Stuart is committed to positively transforming the way business, cultural production and social research is done. He champions working collaboratively, within a participatory and systemic framework with clients, colleagues, partners and stakeholders. His aim: to align and ground people strategy with organisational strategy and to inspire individuals to orient themselves around their passions. Always minded of equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging and sustainability impacts. Stuart understands leadership as a high value, distributed collaborative capacity. His work supports individuals and teams to develop agility and poise, ready to meet emergent realities with confidence, creativity, sensitivity and good humour.
Stuart is a published poet and writer. He has three children and lives in central London, with his partner Dr Poku, an academic specializing in culture, race and education. He draws inspiration from amongst others: the Black Panther Party, Thich Nhat Hahn, Ruth King, Angel Acosta, Bayo Akomolafe and Bernadine Evaristo. Nature is the perennial source of his joy.

Previously the Director of St Ethelburga’s, Simon is Fellow in Reconciliation and leads our MA in Reconciliation in partnership with the University of Winchester. Simon can offer workshops, lectures and keynote speeches on community reconciliation, disagreement success, dialogue methodology and interfaith relations.

Tamanda leads on St Ethelburga’s workplace training and consultancy work. As an educational practitioner, Tamanda has managed an international portfolio of workplace and community training programmes across Europe, the United States and Southern Africa. Her specialist areas include intercultural leadership, faith and cultural awareness and tackling issues connected with identity, religion and belief. She has spoken on such matters on BBC London and at the BT Sports summit on sport and conflict.

She holds an MSc in Education, Power & Social Change from the Birkbeck University of London, where the focus of her research has been the development of faith and cultural awareness in public and private sector workplace settings. Her PhD, commencing September 2017, will focus on the role of Human Resources Management professionals in building trust and inclusion amongst employees of all faiths and beliefs within ‘secular’ institutions.

Debbie is an expert facilitator, trainer and coach, specialising in leadership development and inclusion work.  Debbie creates ‘brave spaces’ where people can start to make sense of exclusion and inclusion, in all their complexity and messiness, and to develop themselves as inclusive leaders. Based on this commitment, Debbie recently co-founded TrustLab, a consultancy offering ‘courageous approaches to leadership and inclusion.’

For over six years, Debbie designed the core methodologies of leading intercultural NGO 3FF (Three Faiths Forum) and managed the Education and Training & Partnerships, teams.
Debbie holds a BA in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge. She was awarded a Rajiv Gandhi scholarship to research the worship of Krishna through sacred theatre in Vrindavan, India.

Sofia is a trainer in the fields of facilitation, coaching and martial arts. She is a trained mediator and an awarded winning social innovator.  She is the founder of The Listening Movement – running the pop-up style Listening Cafes in the wake of the Brexit vote in July 2016, enabling people to reduce the fear of “Other”, to learn to disagree respectfully and to have a good experience of conversation.

Sofia was given London Leader Status by the Mayor’s office in 2010 for her participative community design work, for which she also won the Ogunte Women’s Social Leadership Award People’s vote in 2013. Her social innovations seek to bridge divides,  enable individuals and communities to better work together, increase their sense of agency and unleash their inner and collective creativity. She is a fellow of the RSA.

Dr Lia Dong Shimada is a freelance consultant specialising in mediation, diversity and conflict praxis. She holds a Doctorate in Geography from University College London and a Masters of Arts degree in Theology and Religious Studies (specialising in contemporary Islam) from King’s College London.

In 2000, she was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to work with reforestation movements in Nepal, Madagascar and Ireland. Prior to moving to the UK, Lia worked in the field of international public health research and in higher education. In 2007, she began working in the peacebuilding sector in Northern Ireland, facilitating dialogue about racism, gender equality, hate crime prevention and conflict transformation in paramilitary-controlled communities. From 2010 to 2013, Lia implemented the national strategy for diversity and inclusion for the Methodist Church in Britain.

Stephen Shashoua is Co-Director of the Caravanserai Collective and Founder of Plan C – Culture and Cohesion, working through the arts, conflict transformation, and organisational development and engaging with themes of identity and social cohesion primarily in the NGO, academic, commercial and policy sectors utilising facilitated spaces, research and programming. Stephen is an award-winning innovator in the social cohesion field, having led the UK based Three Faiths Forum (3FF) for more than 10 years, turning it into one of the UK’s largest interfaith and intercultural organisations. Stephen continues to work towards solutions to tensions between people and communities and promote interaction.

Stephen is a Yale World Fellow, a KAICIID International Fellow, a Habibie Center Associate Fellow, a Strategic Advisor to the Rising Peace Forum, an Ariane de Rothschild Foundation Fellow, an Strategic Advisor to New Horizons in British Islam, an Advisor to the Lived Religion Project, a UNAOC Global Expert, a member of the ROI Community, and was named one of ‘40 Jews under 40’ making a positive difference to the British Jewish community. He is based in the UK.