About

We need more sustainable, equitable and robust societies – and fast

Laurie Laybourn researches, writes and speaks on the global environmental emergency and the policies and politics we need to adequately respond. Drawing on a decade of experience in academia, activism and policymaking, his work explores the leadership needed to transition to more sustainable and equitable societies while contending with the growing destabilisation resulting from the worsening environmental crisis.

He is currently a Visiting Fellow at Chatham House, an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and a Visiting Fellow at the Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter. His wide-ranging research includes leading the major Responding to Environmental Breakdown programme at IPPR, which won a 2019 Prospect Think Tank of the Year award. Laurie is also a trustee at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and co-author, with Mathew Lawrence, of Planet on Fire: A manifesto for the age of environmental breakdown, published by Verso Books in April 2021. He writes regularly for a range of publications and speaks on TV, radio and at events.

Previously, he was the Director of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change and was the co-founding Executive Director of the Economic Change Unit. Laurie has also worked at the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics and the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) at Oxford University, in the House of Lords, and as an NHS campaigner, founding and leading the Bring Back the NHS and #TalkNHS events. He has a MPhil in economics from Oxford University and a BSc in physics.  

Get in touch with Laurie about writing, speaking, research, freelance work, or anything else.