DeSchool 2025

Mariam Abazeri is an environmental and visual anthropologist studying the effects of globalization and climate change on natural resource dependent communities. She is a Presidential Postdoctoral Scholar at the School for Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. Her research interests include groundwater governance, intergenerational ecological knowledge, socio-economic inequalities, and visual culture in water-stressed communities from Asia to Latin America. Prior to her doctorate, she worked at various environmental research centers across West and South Asia on natural resource policy and Indigenous and local community conservation strategies. She holds a doctorate in Environmental Science and Policy from the University of Miami and is the Director of the Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival.

Jason Barahona Rosales is the program coordinator at Degrowth Institute. He works on highlighting the preexisting work directly and indirectly related to the degrowth movement and empowering others to challenge the paradigm of economic growth. These challenges happen in community events, university dialogues, and other engagements that seek to form new combinations of solidarity in order to achieve social and ecological justice.

Malia Becker (she/her) leads creative outreach campaigns at the Center for Biological Diversity addressing the intersection of endless growth, inequitable consumption, and the wildlife extinction crisis. She runs the Simplify the Holidays campaign and the SoKind alternative gift registry to promote solutions to holiday waste and gift-giving. Her work also includes supporting the creation of libraries of things through two pilot projects in 2024. Malia is passionate about discussing degrowth in the environmental and higher ed sectors. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Macalester College in geography and public health.

Sam Bliss tidies the kitchen for Food Not Bombs Burlington. He also teaches applied economics at the University of Vermont, shepherds a flock of seven sheep, and sings really loudly in an "unamericana" band called Marxist Jargon.

Brian Czech is the executive director of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE), which he founded in 2003. Czech served at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service headquarters from 1999-2017, where he developed the Conservation Biology Program for the National Wildlife Refuge System. During the same period, Czech also served as a visiting professor of natural resource economics in Virginia Tech’s National Capitol Region. A wide-ranging scholar, Czech has published over 50 articles in 20-plus academic journals, along with four books: Supply Shock, Gag-Ordered No More, Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train, and The Endangered Species Act. He has also published hundreds of blog articles for the Steady State Herald, the Daly News, and other outlets. Czech has a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin, an M.S. from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. He was designated an “Eco-Champion” by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in 2019.

Zach Czuprysnki is the Sustainability Coordinator at Prescott College in Arizona. When he’s not weaving degrowth into campus initiatives, you can find him running the trails of the Central Highlands, hanging out with his chickens and ducks, or thrashing in a mosh pit.

Bio coming soon

Andras Ferencz is a communications professional working in public health. He is an avid reader of degrowth literature, with a particular interest in the topic of cultural hegemony and dominant cultural narratives. His essay on the hegemonic nature of growth ideology, titled ‘To argue with the King of Growth’, was published in Monthly Review’s MR Online in 2022.

Anthena Gore is a social design strategist and public sector innovator with over a decade of experience advancing climate resilience, energy justice, and urban equity across government and nonprofit sectors. For more than 10 years, she has helped governments, nonprofits and institutions navigate complexity, align diverse stakeholders and craft narratives that drive systems change.

Jack Hammond is a retired sociologist. He taught sociology at the City University of New York. He is the author of Fighting to Learn: Popular Education and Guerrilla War in El Salvador and Building Popular Power: Workers’ and Neighborhood Movements in the Portuguese Revolution. He is a member of Caracol, the degrowth caucus of DSA.

Heather Higinbotham is an educator, systems nerd, writer, and TEDx speaker with over twenty years of experience in sustainability and climate leadership. She specializes in meta-crisis education and post-growth and regenerative systems thinking. She holds advanced degrees in Sustainable Systems and Environmental Science.

Amanda Janoo is an economist and systems change expert dedicated to building just and sustainable economies through participatory policy design processes. As the Economics & Policy Lead at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll), she works with governments, civil society, and international organizations to redefine progress and advance economic policies that prioritize human and ecological flourishing over endless growth. Prior to joining WEAll, Amanda worked as an industrial policy and structural transformation expert for UNIDO, the African Development Bank, and GIZ, and is currently an Family Economic Security Fellow at New America. A Fulbright Scholar and Graduate of Cambridge University, Amanda is known for making complex economic ideas accessible and inspiring. She brings both technical expertise and visionary thinking to conversations about the future of our economies.

Aaron Karp is a social movement organizer. He is currently writing a book on how we can cultivate our inner freedom and why the process is essential for addressing crises of sustainability, democracy, security, and purpose. His articles on system change education can be found on freedomsurvival.org, where you can also sign up to provide feedback on a draft of the book.

Ashley Marie Lagrange (They/Them) is a therapist, collage artist and organizer born, raised and currently residing in Queens, New York to a multigenerational household with Dominican parents. Ashley works in the day as a politicized therapist and coach for the QTBIPOC population which stemmed from their lived experience with madness and grassroots peer support organizing. Ashley is also a Collage Artist, having taught Collage as Liberation classes at The Peoples Forum, as well as facilitated spaces on Agitation Propaganda. Ashley is a member of DegrowNYC and sits as their Propaganda Chair.

Bio coming soon

Bio coming soon

Fashion incubator founder turned degrowth advocate, Stella McShera is working with a small but mighty team to build a new kind of business incubator. Their goal is to support people and projects that value care, community, and enoughness over constant growth. They are focused on sustainability, social justice, and creating a cultural shift through 'main street' businesses. As a Filipina entrepreneur, Stella brings systems thinking, cultural awareness, and a deep commitment to collective well-being. She is especially interested in how behavior change—guided by neuroscience—can help us move toward more regenerative, grounded ways of living. For her degrowth masters thesis (through UAB), she piloted The Clothing Library, the first of its kind program in partnership with public libraries.

As a tenured professor of environmental studies, Greg Mikkelson lectured and published in ecology, philosophy, and economics, with a focus on the nature, causes, and value of biological diversity. He also helped divest his university from fossil fuel. He now volunteers as a researcher and organizer for a growing international movement to get tar sands pipelines out of the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence watershed.

John Mulrow is the executive director of Degrowth Institute, co-founder of DegrowUS, and adjunct professor of Environmental and Ecological Engineering at Purdue University. His research aims to improve environmental assessment by accounting for social outcomes and biophysical limits to economic growth. John is based in Chicago, where he’s worked on urban farming, composting, and climate action for many years.

Elise O’Malley is a community builder and degrowth advocate based in Chicago. Her professional background includes working with small business owners and companies on their circular economy goals (in other words, reducing their waste!). Elise received facilitator training for the Offers and Needs Market from the Post Growth Institute in 2023.

Bio coming soon

I started my career in investment banking. Perpetual growth modeling never made sense to me. I only really comprehended the absurdity after I left however and started studying permaculture and environmental activism. That was in 2016 and since then I've spent more of my time focused on progressive electoral and social justice organizing, particularly around racial and economic justice in the US. I grew up in the Philippines before moving to DC in high school, where I’m based now. I got married last year and have a cat, Kiwi, and in my free time you can usually find me playing soccer, hanging by the river or the sea, and growing vegetables.

Anna Prouty is a writer, artist and community organizer living in Cascadia. She is the media and outreach coordinator for DGI, and a co-founder of DegrowUS. Today, she primarily focuses on ecological restoration, resilience, dual power and weaving regional, democratic economies. Her debut novel, Genesis, will be released in summer 2026 by Vine Leaves Press. She holds a BA in Political Science from Barnard College and a MSc in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics.

Bio coming soon

Emma Schoenberg is a trainer, organizer, and artist with The Magpie Project, an experiment in transformative movement building and mutual aid. She is the co-founder of NoCoalNoGas, the successful direct action campaign to close the last coal plant on New England’s electrical grid. She is a co-creator of the sacred activism project, the Fierce Vulnerability Network, Most recently, she was a member of the Core Team at the Climate Disobedience Center.

Nina Smolyar is a PhD student at the University of Vermont, Graduate Fellow at Gund Institute for the environment, and part of the Leadership for the Ecozoic academic community. Her current research focuses on the relationship between degrowth peer-reviewed research and degrowth practice outside of academia, how actors in the movement are responding to the rise of authoritarianism, and how the role of spirituality shapes degrowth’s academic scholarship and enactment in communities.

Bio coming soon

Bio coming soon

Ronald Trosper has just retired as Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. His latest work is Indigenous Economics; Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands (University of Arizona Press, 2022), which explores the consequences of Indigenous relationality for economic activity. He examined the institutions that provided stability for the peoples of the Northwest Coast in his book, Resilience, Reciprocity and Ecological Economics: Northwest Coast Sustainability (Routledge, 2009). His Ph.D. degree is in Economics, Harvard University (1974). He is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana.