Jeremy recently completed his PhD thesis on ‘Geoengineering, the Anthropocene and the end of nature’. He is now working on a project looking at expertise at the Melbourne School of Government at the University of Melbourne. He is particularly interested in the ways in which notions of the Anthropocene and of post-nature are mobilised in relation to emergent technologies.  Other research interests include environmental politics in the global South and their relationship to the development project.  Whilst at Harvard he plans to commence work on the contested politics of energy and development in contemporary South Africa.

Jeremy is a late-comer to academia.  He grew up in South Africa.  Shortly after completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town he was excluded from further studies because of his anti-apartheid activities.  After a spell as a political prisoner he became active in trade union organisation and held leadership positions in the Congress of SA Trade Unions.  His book ‘Striking Back: a history of COSATU’ was awarded a Noma prize. He went on to work for the first post-apartheid government as a senior public servant, including as an advisor to the Presidency.

He moved to the UK in 2001 and worked first as head of global research for a non-profit organisation conducting research into corporates for responsible investors, and then as a Development Director for the University of Cambridge’s Programme for Sustainability Leadership, designing and delivering programmes targeted at leaders in business, government and civil society.  He also received a Masters degree in Governance and Ethics from the University of London.  He re-located to Australia in 2007 where he continued his work for Cambridge and took up a position advising LaTrobe University on sustainability and the education curriculum.

PUBLICATIONS:

“Paradigm dressed as epoch: the ideology of the Anthropocene?” (2015). Environmental Values, Vol. 24:1.