PRESS KIT
Bio
Tim Jackson is an ecological economist and writer. Since 2016 he has been Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). CUSP is a multidisciplinary research centre which aims to understand the economic, social and political dimensions of sustainable prosperity. Its guiding vision for prosperity is one in which people everywhere have the capability to flourish as human beings—within the ecological and resource constraints of a finite planet.
Tim has been at the forefront of international debates on sustainability for three decades and has worked closely with the UK Government, the United Nations, the European Commission, numerous NGOs, private companies and foundations to bring economic and social science research into sustainability. During five years at the Stockholm Environment Institute in the early 1990s, he pioneered the concept of preventative environmental management—a core principle of the circular economy—outlined in his 1996 book Material Concerns: Pollution Profit and Quality of life. From 2004 to 2011 he was Economics Commissioner for the UK Sustainable Development Commission where his work culminated in the publication of his controversial and ground-breaking book Prosperity without Growth (2009/2017) which has subsequently been translated into twenty foreign languages. It was named as a Financial Times ‘book of the year’ in 2010 and UnHerd’s economics book of the decade in 2019. In 2016, Tim was awarded the Hillary Laureate for exceptional international leadership in sustainability. His book Post Growth—life after capitalism (Polity Press, 2021) won the 2022 Eric Zencey Prize for Economics. His latest book The Care Economy is to be published in February 2025.
Tim holds degrees in mathematics (MA, Cambridge), philosophy (MA, Uni Western Ontario) and physics (PhD, St Andrews). He also holds honorary degrees at the University of Brighton in the UK and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Belgian Royal Academy of Science. In addition to his academic work, he is an award-winning dramatist with numerous radio-writing credits for the BBC.
Media contact
Gemma Birkett
PA to Prof Tim Jackson
g.birkett@surrey.ac.uk
Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity
University of Surrey :: GU2 7XH Guildford :: UK
Video
Research
- Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP): cusp.ac.uk
- Professorial Fellowship for Prosperity and Sustainability in the Green Economy (PASSAGE): prosperitas.org.uk
- Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group (SLRG): sustainablelifestyles.ac.uk
- Research Group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE)
- Research Fellowship on the Social Psychology of Sustainable Consumption
Further Reading
Jackson, T 2021. Post Growth. Life after Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Jackson, T 2020. Wellbeing Matters—Tackling growth dependency. An Economy That Works Briefing Paper Series, No 3. London: All-Party Parliamentary Group on Limits to Growth, February 2020.
Jackson, T and P Victor 2020. The Transition to a Sustainable Prosperity—A Stock-Flow-Consistent Ecological Macroeconomic Model for Canada. Ecological Economics, Vol 177.
Jackson T and P Victor 2019. Unravelling the claims for (and gainst) green growth. Science, 366 (6468): 950-951.
Jackson, T 2019: Zero Carbon Sooner—The case for an early zero carbon target for the UK. CUSP Working Paper No 18. Guildford: University of Surrey.
Jackson, T 2018: The Post-Growth Challenge: Secular Stagnation, Inequality and the Limits to Growth. CUSP Working Paper No 12. Guildford: University of Surrey.
Jackson, T 2017. Prosperity Without Growth. Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow. London: Routledge.
Jackson, T 2013. Paradise Lost—Escaping the ‘iron cage’ of consumerism. In: Wuppertal Spezial (Vol 48), Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy.
Jackson, T 2012. Let’s be less productive. In: The New York Times, 27 May 2012.
