Merlin is a biologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms. (merlinsheldrake.com)

Robert Macfarlane is the author of books about people, place and nature including Underland, The Old Ways, Landmarks and The Wild Places, as well as — with Jackie Morris — The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. He has written films including River (2022) and Mountain (2017), both starring Willem Dafoe, and collaborated with musicians including Johnny Flynn, Cosmo Sheldrake and Julie Fowlis. His work has been translated into many languages and widely adapted for stage, film, television, music and radio. He is Professor of Literature and the Environmental Humanities in Cambridge, and his current book-in-progress is called Is A River Alive?, and concerns the lives and deaths of rivers and the global Rights of Nature movement.

César Rodríguez-Garavito is the founding director of the More Than Human Rights (MOTH) Project and the Earth Rights Advocacy Program at NYU School of Law. He is a Professor of Clinical Law and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. César is a human rights and environmental justice scholar and practitioner whose work and publications focus on climate change, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and the human rights movement.

He is the Editor-in-Chief of Open Global Rights. César has been an expert witness of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an Adjunct Judge of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, a member of the Science Panel for the Amazon, and a lead litigator in climate change, socioeconomic rights, and Indigenous rights cases. He has conducted field research and environmental and human rights investigations around the world, including in Brazil, India, South Africa, the Caribbean region, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, and the United States.

Elizabeth Macpherson is a lawyer, Professor of Law, and Rutherford Discovery Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. She specializes in natural resources law and Indigenous and human rights, with a particular interest in the protection of environmental and Indigenous values in the management of water. Elizabeth is the author of Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation: Lessons from Comparative Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and a number of journal articles on the Indigenous and environmental rights, the rights of nature and legal rights for rivers in coparative law.

She has also practiced for almost fifteen years as an Indigenous rights and natural resources lawyer in private practice and government in New Zealand, Australia and Chile, including litigating and negotiating Treaty of Waitangi claims and settlements, and as the Principal Legal Adviser Aboriginal Affairs at the Victorian Government Department of Premier and Cabinet in Australia. During 2016, she was the Assistant Director, Aboriginal Affairs Policy for the Victorian Government, where she advised on the proposal for a Treaty between the State and Aboriginal Victorians.

Elizabeth holds a LLB (Hons) and BCA from Victoria University of Wellington and a PhD in Law from the University of Melbourne.

Patricia Gualinga is a human rights and land rights defender from the Kichwa people of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Throughout her life, Patricia has dedicated herself to protecting her community from human rights violations caused primarily by oil exploration and militarization.

In 2012, she was a witness before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in a landmark case filed in 2002 about the impacts of oil exploitation on her community, which concluded with the court ruling in favor of the Sarayaku people. In 2019, she received the Brote Activismo Medioambiental Award in Spain, in October 2021 the ALNOBA Courage and Leadership Award in the USA, December 2021 Al moumin Human Rights Award and recently the Olof Palme Human Rights Award 2022 for her leadership in the struggle to improve indigenous living conditions. She currently supports and leads the Mujeres Amazónicas collective dedicated to the protection of the environment, indigenous peoples, women’s rights and land rights.

Cormac Cullinan is a lawyer with strong creative, communication, writing, and leadership skills, and a reputation for innovation and “thinking outside the box”. He is the Director of Culling & Associates, where he represents a diverse range of clients that include international organisations, governments, businesses (e.g. in the renewable energy, waste, manufacturing and hospitality sectors), cities, non-governmental organisations and local communities.

Cormac started his legal career in maritime and international commercial law with Shepstone and Wylie and Maitland and Co before specialising in environmental law and governance in 1994 when he established EnAct International in London. Today few lawyers can rival the depth and breadth of the environmental law and governance expertise which Cormac has acquired in working in more than 25 countries over three decades. This includes: designing the “architecture” of public and private sector governance systems that promote sustainability, drafting contracts and legal instruments (ranging from international treaties and declarations to national, provincial and municipal legislation) litigating, advising businesses and social entrepreneurs on greening their enterprises, and developing legal compliance systems.

He is also an internationally respected author, speaker and advocate for ecological sustainability and the rights of Nature. In 2008 he was included in a book profiling 301 extraordinary environmentalists in history and in 2012 he was won the Nick Steele award for the South African environmentalist of the year, and in 2018 the Enviropaedia life-time achievement award.

Cormac loves wild places and creatures and spends a lot of time thinking about how to build socially just and ecologically sustainable communities within industrialised civilisations. His work in pioneering a legal philosophy that restores an ecological perspective to governance systems (Earth jurisprudence) is internationally recognised. Cormac is the founder and managing director of the Wild Law Institute, which works in alliance with indigenous and local peoples, organisations and individuals from around the world to pioneer laws and practices that enhance the health and vitality of Earth. He has addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations and many other international conferences, and led the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.

Teresa Vicente is a professor of philosophy of law at the University of Murcia (Spain) who has dedicated her professional life to ecological justice and the rights of nature. Teresa led the campaign for recognition of legal personhood for Mar Menor, which was affirmed in a recent ruling by the Constitutional Court of Spain. For this, she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Jackie Gallant is a lawyer and the Director of Programs at the NYU More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Program, where she works on legal actions, research, and education to advance rights and well-being for humans, nonhumans, and the web of life that sustains us all.

Jackie holds a JD (cum laude) from NYU School of Law and a BA (magna cum laude) from Brown University.

Carlos Andrés Baquero-Díaz is the Research Director at the NYU Earth Rights Research and Action (TERRA) Program, which is the umbrella organization for the MOTH Program. He graduated from the JSD program at NYU Law, where he worked on the intersection between property rights and environmental protection in tropical forests. Carlos Andrés holds an LLM in International Legal Studies from NYU Law, where he was a Hauser Global Scholar and 2019 recipient of the Jerome Lipper Award. He also has a J.D. from Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia), where he graduated cum laude, and a B.A. in Political Science from the same university.

Rebecca Lewin is a curator and writer focusing on the intersections of contemporary art, design, and ecology. She is currently Senior Curator at the Design Museum, where she is developing the forthcoming exhibition ‘More than Human.’ She was previously Curator of Exhibitions and Design at the Serpentine Galleries, where she delivered exhibitions, Pavilions, publications, and live events. From 2019 onwards she developed ‘Back to Earth,’ as part of the Serpentine’s General Ecology – a pioneering and cross-disciplinary research network of individuals and organisations engaged in prototyping artist-led, environmentally driven systems change. Independently, Rebecca has curated exhibitions and written for publications as well as acting as an external examiner at écal Lausanne and Iceland University of the Arts, and has contributed to courses at Oxford University, Design Academy Eindhoven, and the Royal College of Art, among others.