Simon Mair
Senior Lecturer in Sustainability

Profile

Biography

Simon is an ecological economist, working to understand the current economy in order to build a better one. Simon’s research interests include post-growth and degrowth economics, the future of work under green transitions, and re-imagining the economy. 

Simon is a co-investigator with the Leverhulme funded Premodern Economics, Future Sustainability: Social Metabolism Across Deep Time (PERSIST) project and the EU Horizon funded Wellbeing, Inclusive, Sustainable Economies (WISE) Horizons. Persist applies material flow analysis to ancient economies to better understand relationships between economic organisation and resource use. WISE explores the transitions and possibilities for moving to post-growth economies within planetary boundaries. He was previously co-investigator with the ESRC funded Centre for the Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), leading work on productivity, wellbeing and energy, and on the NERC funded project Marine Spatial Planning Addressing Climate Effects (MSPACE), leading modelling of the links between marine resources, climate change, and regional supply chains.

Simon is programme lead for the MSc in Environmental Economics and Environmental Management. He has previously led the MSc in Corporate Sustainability in Environmental Management at York and the MBA in Circular Economy at the University of Bradford. He is a member of the Management Educators Navigating Degrowth (MEND) collective. The collective explores ways to teach post-growth and degrowth ideas in management education. 

Simon’s academic writing has been published in a variety of books and journals including Ecological Economics, The Review of Radical Political Economics, and The Lancet Planetary Health. His public writing has been published by international outlets including BBC Future, New Socialist, and Resilience.