Women on deep ecology

Profile: Mary Oliver

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was an American poet whose accessible nature poetry examined attention to the natural world. Her work invited readers to observe closely the ordinary aspects of nature - grasshoppers, bears, wild geese. She suggested that sustained attention to nature can cultivate direct experience of interconnection.

Oliver’s poetry presented birds, flowers, trees, and animals as subjects that reveal patterns of existence. Her question “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” from “The Summer Day” has become widely known. She proposed that humans are participants in natural processes rather than separate observers.

Profile: Robin Wall Kimmerer

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist, author, and distinguished professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. As an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she integrates indigenous wisdom and Western scientific knowledge in her work on traditional ecological knowledge and restoration ecology.

Kimmerer’s approach bridges empirical science with the holistic worldview of indigenous peoples. She advocates for what she terms “the grammar of animacy” - recognizing the personhood of the more-than-human world. Her work examines how indigenous protocols for relating to land can inform contemporary environmental practice while respecting indigenous sovereignty and wisdom.

Profile: Vandana Shiva

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Vandana Shiva (born 1952) is an Indian physicist, environmental activist, and author who advocates for biodiversity, traditional agriculture, and indigenous peoples’ rights. Her work examines connections between environmental and social justice.

Trained as a physicist, Shiva shifted to environmental activism following the Chipko movement in the Himalayas, where women physically protected trees from logging. She founded Navdanya in 1991, an organization promoting organic farming and seed sovereignty that has worked with farmers to preserve indigenous seed varieties and transition from industrial agriculture.

Profile: Elisabet Sahtouris

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Elisabet Sahtouris is an American and Greek evolution biologist, futurist, and author whose work emphasises how cooperation and symbiosis, rather than competition alone, drive evolutionary processes. Similarly to Lynn Margulis Her research on living systems theory offers scientific foundations for ecological worldviews that recognize nature’s inherent cooperative and self-organizing aspects.

Trained in evolution biology and microbiology, Sahtouris has dedicated her career to making evolutionary science accessible to wider audiences while revealing its implications for human society and economics. Her concept of “mature ecosystems” proposes that natural systems evolve from competitive to cooperative relationships, offering models for sustainable human civilization.

Profile: Joanna Macy

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Joanna Macy (1929-2025) was a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. Born in Los Angeles, she earned her PhD and spent five decades developing the Work That Reconnects, a group methodology for addressing ecological grief and cultivating engagement.

Macy studied at Wellesley College and conducted doctoral research on systems theory and Buddhist philosophy. Her academic work explored connections between Buddhist concepts of dependent co-arising and contemporary systems thinking. In the late 1970s, she began developing what she initially called “Despair and Empowerment Work,” proposing that people needed structured ways to acknowledge grief about ecological and social conditions.

Profile: Lynn Margulis

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) was an American evolutionary biologist whose endosymbiotic theory proposed that complex cells arose through symbiotic mergers of simpler organisms. Her work emphasized cooperation and symbiosis as drivers of evolutionary innovation alongside competition.

Margulis proposed her theory in 1967, suggesting that complex cells with nuclei (eukaryotes) arose through symbiotic mergers of simpler bacterial cells. Her hypothesis that mitochondria and chloroplasts were once independent bacteria that became incorporated into larger cells faced initial resistance. Her paper “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells” was rejected by fifteen journals before publication. One grant application received the response: “Your research is crap.”

Profile: Pat Fleming

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Pat Fleming is a deep ecology facilitator who co-authored Thinking Like a Mountain (1988) with John Seed, Joanna Macy, and Arne Naess. She has conducted experiential deep ecology workshops for over forty years.

Born in England to a Northern Irish family, Fleming holds British-Australian nationality and currently resides in northern Lutruwita (Tasmania). Her background includes mental health counseling, conservation botany, organic farming, and environmental education. She holds an MA in Psychology from Edinburgh University and an MSc in Botanical Conservation from Plymouth University.

Profile: Vimala Thakar

Sun, 01 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Vimala Thakar (1921-2009) was an Indian philosopher, social activist, and spiritual teacher who pioneered the integration of meditative inquiry with social justice work. A woman who challenged the norms of Indian spiritual and political life in the mid-20th century, she proposed that inner transformation and outer action are inseparable dimensions of human wholeness.

Influenced by both Gandhian philosophy and the teachings of J. Krishnamurti, Thakar developed an approach to spiritual life that rejected the traditional separation between contemplation and social engagement. She argued that becoming a spiritual inquirer without social consciousness is a “luxury we can ill afford,” while social activism without understanding the inner workings of mind represents “the worst folly.”