Speaker: John Barry. 

Date and venue: Friday 26th July 2024 at 11.30am. Maldron Hotel Shandon as part of Spirit of Mother Jones Summer School.

John Barry is Professor of Green Political Economy and Co-Director of the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action at Queens University Belfast.  He is also Co-Chair of the Belfast Climate Commission.  His last book was The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World (Oxford University Press).  

John Barry is a father, a political activist, trades unionist, recovering politician and a member of the Sustainable Future Committee of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

What keeps him awake at night is the life opportunities and future wellbeing of his and other children in this age of the planetary emergency and intersecting social and economic injustices within and between countries.  What also keeps him awake at night is the following question: why is it easier for most people to believe in the end of the world than the end of capitalism and economic growth?   What keeps him awake during his day job is why higher education is continuing in a ‘business as usual’ manner while the planet burns, inequality increases, and militarisation and conflict within and between societies grows?

His areas of academic research include post-growth and heterodox political economy; the politics, policy and political economy of climate breakdown and climate resilience; socio-technical analyses of low carbon just energy and sustainability transitions; and the overlap between conflict transformation and these sustainability transitions.