Regenerative Learning Network

Network Development
Curriculum Design
Learning Leadership
Transformative Learning
Organisational Change

Pavel has spoken widely about learning, organisational transformation, network development, democracy and global relationship building and is the author and editor, most recently of Transformative Learning (with Satish Kumar in 2021), “Relational Ecologies: Building Regenerative Community Learning Networks” in Regenerative Ecosystems in the Anthropocene (2023) and “Lessons from the Periphery” in Regenerative Learning (2022). Pavel’s current book in progress is titled Networked Learning: Transforming Higher Education through Distributed Learning.

Pavel is also an ultramarathon runner and has shared his adventures as witness to climate change and an exploration of the resilience of the human and more-than-human in the Arctic, sub-Arctic, and beyond on his site climaterun.org.

Maggie Favretti, a Yale-and Middlebury-educated cultural historian, has spent over 35 years happily helping her students to learn by engaging in life now.  What are we waiting for? Maggie has won scholarship and teaching awards from three professional historical organizations (WHA, AHA, OAH), a national organization of bankers (Sallie Mae Foundation Teacher of the Year), and a national organization of student leaders (21st-century Teacher of the Year).  She has been recognized by President Obama for her work in environmental education, and by the Sousa Mendes Foundation’s Freedom Award for her work facilitating the next generation of rescuers, Students for Refugees. Recently, she earned the US Coast Guard’s JoAnnMiller Community Award. By far her greatest joy has been devising opportunities for youth and educators and communities to tap into their innate creativity, resourcefulness, and collaboration across disciplines, using “community co-design thinking” to solve complex problems in their own communities and beyond (www.designed4resilience.org). 

As an expert in educational frameworks and collaborations (k-16+), Maggie uses co-design thinking to empower students and their communities to thrive by shifting the paradigm to youth partnership in making their world more sustainable, equitable, resilient and happy.  Her current research interests include regenerative learning communities and adaptation design, the ethics of time in leadership decision-making, anti-colonial practices in youth development, teacher and community empowerment, the roles of shared efficacy, creative confidence and civic courage in climate change adaptation/mitigation capacity, and the impact on and role of teachers in disaster response and recovery.​

In 2023, Maggie published Learning in the Age of Climate Disasters (Routledge), one outcome of a life of thoughtful learning together with nearly 10,000 kids, their families, and their communities. Maggie plans to keep advocating for watershed and indigenous rights, teaching holistically, co-creating resilient regenerative learning communities, and planning for the next seven generations. 

Transformative Learning
Regenerative Design
Community Development
Community Empowerment
Network Development

Mona Nasseri is an educator, researcher, and designer with over a decade of experience in higher education. Currently serving as the Programme Lead for MA Ecological Design Thinking and holding the position of Head of Research at Schumacher College, Mona has been developing and consulting on education programmes centred around the wellbeing of people and the planet.

Mona’s teaching and research are mainly focused on participatory approaches to socio-ecological transition toward regenerative futures. With a background in craft, material culture, and ecological design, she explores the interplay between localized and relational initiatives alongside global collaborations and systemic innovative interventions.

Mona is also actively engaged in interdisciplinary and international research projects focusing on social and ecological resilience in the face of climate change. At the core of her work is empowering communities to cultivate local wisdom and drive the kind of change they desire to see in their own local environment. Her research approach includes collecting stories of places and cultures, navigating conflicting stakeholder expectations, mapping complexity, and creating spaces for dialogue, co-design, action, and stewardship. Her long-term collaboration with the Jali-Ardhi project based in northeast Tanzania, showcases a robust connection between community empowerment and action and broader global support.

In her research activities and leadership roles, Mona has played a pivotal part in cultivating partnerships and fostering collaborations with individual educators, academic institutions, learning initiatives, and regenerative enterprises on both national and international scales. Her commitment to forging connections has been instrumental in shaping innovative and impactful educational experiences.

Mona stands as a dedicated advocate for ecological consciousness and design thinking, aspiring to influence the realm of meaningful education and research toward a regenerative future.

Her newly found interest and tranquil retreat is kayaking along the River Dart in Devon.

Regenerative Ecosystem Design
Interactive Systems Design
Transdisciplinary Action Research
Systems Dynamics
Systems Science

Amar was born and brought up in a small village in India. He went to study in a convent school and then in a military school. He then studied chemical engineering and worked as an engineering design & commissioning consultant. Subsequently, he completed his MBA and worked as a product manager and a business manager. Later with a PhD in FDI Strategy, he entered academics and spent about a decade, studying and teaching MNC Strategy and International Business. He has extensively travelled and lived in different ecosystems around the world on studies, research, conferences, teaching, training, and consulting. 

During the last two decades, in addition to teaching Research Methodologies, Sustainability and Systems Science, he has been involved in Action Research on eight major dimensions of an ecosystem. In recent years, he has been working on a specific aspect of systems science, viz., All Interacting Evolving Systems Science (AIESS). Adopting AIESS, he studies and acts on the ontology and epistemology of change, whether degeneration or regeneration in Nature and our Reality. Some of his work on different dimensions of regenerative ecosystems can be seen here: http://xim.edu.in/aiess/research-area.html

Professor Amar Nayak has been an advisor, consultant and a trainer to many organizations and institutions, including the National Government of India, State Governments, UN Agencies, For Profit as well as Not-for-Profit Organizations and Academic Institutions on Regenerative Ecosystems. In Xavier Institute of Management, XIM University Bhubaneswar, he has been a NABARD Chair Professor, Professor of Strategy and Chairperson of the ‘Centre for All Interacting Evolving Systems Science’. He also enjoys and learns from being a smallholder farmer of regenerative climate resilient agriculture, a water diviner and in building awareness among children and youth on Nature, Ecology and Systems Science for regenerative ecosystems and flourishing state.

Regenerative leadership
Change strategy
Organizational design
Transformative learning
Transdisciplinary research
Food systems governance
Regenerative agriculture

Nicole Negowetti is a food systems educator, change strategist, advocate, attorney, and scholar. For nearly fifteen years, Nicole has developed, led, and implemented a broad range of initiatives addressing the health, environmental, and economic impacts of the food system, and promoting sustainable, equitable, and healthy food and agricultural production. Developing and facilitating regenerative learning networks has been central to Nicole’s work. She is the co-founder of the Northwest Indiana (NWI) Food Council, whose mission is to build a just, thriving, and regenerative food system for all, and founder of the Plant Based Foods Institute’s Sustainable Sourcing Initiative, a community of practice which includes farmers, ingredient suppliers, retailers, distributors, funders, and food companies who are piloting new markets for crops grown in regenerative ecosystems. Nicole also serves on the United Nations Development Programme’s Conscious Food Systems Alliance and Green America’s Soil & Climate Alliance.

Nicole is an experienced and accomplished educator and coalition builder who has created a variety of innovative learning programs. As a Visiting Lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, she developed and teaches Food Law & Regulation, which trains graduate students in advocacy skills and food policy analysis. She previously served as a Clinical Instructor and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic and Food Law & Policy Clinic, where she developed and led projects and courses relating to food security, nutrition, public health, animal welfare, food technology, and environmental justice. Nicole’s scholarship on food policy has been published in leading academic journals, such as Nature Food, University of Oregon Law Review, and the Journal of Food & Drug Law, and has received international recognition. She is writing her first book, Feeding the Future: Restoring the Planet & Healing Ourselves.

Nicole is a mom of two young boys and a passionate trail runner who feels most at home in the woods.

Dr Simon Platten is an Environmental anthropologist, specialising in the social dynamics and economics of small-scale food systems. He has 25 years experience within Higher Education and currently holds honorary research positions at the University of Kent and the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University. He is a Director of Tamar Grow Local CIC and a Trustee of the Real Farming Trust and freelance consultant.

He is currently a senior lecturer and program lead for the BSc undergraduate degree in Regenerative Food and Farming at Schumacher College. This degree program combines practical skills of regenerative growing, livestock management, business planning, soil and plant monitoring and research skills, with a social science based understanding of the problems we face within a global food system and the solutions we have at hand through regenerative practice.

He continues to be a Director of Tamar Grow Local CIC (TGL) and has project managed the development of the TGL ecosystem of food projects and businesses for the last 12 years. During this time he has helped establish over 30 community food projects, businesses, and co-operative ventures designed to be self-supporting but to benefit from the mutual support provided under the TGL umbrella. The resulting network of projects have been shaped to grow resilience and respond to market failures around small-scale food production, and to revitalise local food consumption, production and employment opportunities. Most recently he has been working on a community owned shared distribution network that can leverage spare capacity within an existing network of food growers and distribution hubs to reduce the carbon associated with local food distribution and to provide better financial returns for food growers.

He is also an active member of the UK Farmstart Network, a group of organisations which provide access to land and additional support for new entrants into agriculture, and of the European network of which the UK Farmstart Network is a part.

Simon is a keen smallholder and craftsman and very much enjoys growing food, and making things out of metal, leather and wood.

Rachel Sweeney has worked in Higher Education for the past twenty years, expanding creative pedagogies through experiential and transdisciplinary learning.  She is currently Program Lead for the Masters in Movement Mind and Ecology at Schumacher College and has worked as Head of Dance Studies at Liverpool Hope University, Visiting Fellow for the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University, and as Centre Fellow for the Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Plymouth.

As a long standing movement artist and creative facilitator, Rachel’s own practice is embedded in  an eco-somatic approach, which she views as a tool to foster self and self-with-other understandings of our natural world, and cultivate reciprocal and empathic relationships with place.

Rachel is Co-Director of international arts ecology collective The Floating Village whose work engages rural communities in creative and artistic collaborative approaches to bring about public dialogue around how to live with change. Recent commissions include Creative Ireland (2020) and LAWPRO Ireland (Local Authorities Water Program, 2021). In 2022 she formed the Movement Network South West, developing ecologically attuned movement training for diverse communities of practice including NHS, Higher and Secondary Education, and professional artist training. Her previous community work in the area of land based and social justice work has been supported through Dartmoor National Park Authorities, Teignmouth County Council and Dance in Devon, while her academic research has been supported through the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, Creative Ireland, and CSIRO Australia.