A journey in Sustainability - Looking backwards and ahead

Roland came to Surrey in 1981, initially as Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering. Chairing the UK national research programme in Clean Technology convinced him that the solutions to man-made environmental problems could not be found within single academic disciplines. This led him to set up the Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) at Surrey in 1992, to bring together relevant disciplines that were commonly regarded as distinct. CES was subsequently renamed the Centre for Environment and Sustainability. This lecture will review the lessons from this trans-disciplinary endeavour and from Roland’s experiences outside the university, in advisory bodies to governments and commercial companies.

Amongst other roles, Roland has served as a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and of the Science Advisory Committee of the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), as Review Editor and Chapter Author for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and as Specialist Advisor to the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords. He is a Past President of the International Society for Industrial Ecology. He has held visiting appointments at Chalmers University (Sweden), the University of Coimbra (Portugal), and the University of Naples (Italy). He now lives in Canada and is an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia.

Richard Murphy joined the Centre for Environment and Sustainability as Professor of Life Cycle Assessment in February 2013.

He has a background in biological sciences with a BSc in Botany with Zoology from King's College London and a PhD in Pure & Applied Biology from Imperial College London. Richard has undertaken Post-Doctoral work in New Zealand and The Netherlands and, prior to joining CES, was a Reader in Plant Sciences at Imperial College London.

Richard is a past President of the Institute of Wood Science (now part of the Institute of Materials) and is a member of DEFRA's Hazardous Substances Advisory Committee, BRE's Advisory Panel and BSI committees. He is a founder and Director of LCAworks Ltd and was Chief Scientific Officer of Mycologix Ltd. He has advised the UK Climate Change Committee on LCA for bioenergy systems.

Richard received a Rector's Award for Excellence in Teaching at Imperial College London in 2011.

Lorenzo is the Founding Director of the Institute for Sustainability at the University of Surrey (UK) and a former member of Parliament and Minister of Education, University and Research in Italy. He is passionate about sustainability education and research, having written books such as: Wellbeing Economy: Success in a World Without Growth (MacMillan 2017) and The World After GDP: Economics, Politics and International Relations in the Post-Growth Era (Polity 2017), which have been featured – among others -  by Bloomberg and the Financial Times.

His opinion pieces have been published by The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, TruthOut, Die Presse, The Conversation, Das Parlament, Der Freitag, The Mail and Guardian, Business Day and open Democracy. He is also a sought-after public speaker on issues regarding sustainable wellbeing, governance innovation and purpose-driven business.