FEASTA and EHFF

Doctor Sarah Browne from TCD Business School explains why she moved away from a traditional, mainstream teaching of marketing - including such subjects as ‘micro-targeting’ and ‘brand equity’. Instead, Sarah and colleagues, both in the Business School and elsewhere, are now taking a more critical stance which questions the prioritisation of demand generation, growth at all costs, and the targeting of vulnerable consumers. They are exploring ways to harness the power of communications expertise in order to help bring about greater awareness of the need to achieve a wellbeing economy, and ways in which economic transformation could take place.

Sarah gave her impressions of the Rethinking Growth conference in June 2024, in particular the sessions on the role of academics in rethinking growth, and the conversation session with Minister Paschal Donohoe. She spoke about the compelling and frightening narrative that assumes that zero or negative growth must always equal austerity and regression, and how this needs to be addressed with powerful, positive counter-narratives. Topics covered in the discussion also included the need to push back against corporate capture of academic research and to find other ways to fund academic endeavours, and the need to fill gaps (or perceived gaps) in empirical research on post-growth and degrowth policy.

David Somekh and Caroline Whyte spoke with Mark Garavan, who is a senior lecturer in Social Care at the Atlantic Technological University and the author of the recently-published book ‘Care’. Topics discussed include the double-edged role of technology, the power of dominant narratives - including those concerning inequality and economic growth - modernity’s quest to eliminate all suffering, and the adaptability of human beings.

In this podcast Seán Ó Conláin spoke with Philip McDonagh. Philip is the author of several poetry collections and the Director of the Centre for Religion, Human Values, and International Relations at Dublin City University. A former diplomat, he was involved the Good Friday Agreement peace process in Northern Ireland, and he served as ambassador to India, the Holy See, Russia and Finland.

The topics that Philip and Seán discussed included:

- the truth expressed by poetry

- links between Classical thinking on community, indigenous group governance and the role of the commons

- the need for awareness of history, politics and language in spiritual disciples

- attitudes towards private property and the role of money in the economy

- the view expressed by many (including Minister Donohoe at the recent Rethinking Growth conference) that endless economic growth is both necessary and possible

- the skill involved in working on visions of reality

- past examples of visionary thinking during dark times that bore tangible fruit

David Somekh and Caroline Whyte speak with Takis Kotos, the founder of the Cambridge Medical Academy, about his work on integrating conventional and traditional medicine, including research on herbs, while also making use of new technologies to help ensure that patient care is personalised as possible.

In this podcast, Seán Ó Conláin and Caroline Whyte spoke with Harjeet Singh. Harjeet is the Global Engagement Director at the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative (FFNPT). He is currently also a member of the United Nations' Technical Expert Group on Comprehensive Risk Management.

Topics covered in our interview included the history of the FFNPT initiative, its current status, and the next steps that are being planned. We discussed the limitations of the UNFCCC COP climate negotiations process and the need for a complementary global fossil fuel phase-out framework, and to ensure that those who are most responsible for the climate crisis are obliged to respect this framework. We identified strong alignment between the Treaty initiative and the “Cap and Share” fossil-fuel-phase-out campaign that Feasta is working on with a group of partners, and we discussed possible next steps for the Treaty initiative.

Caroline Whyte interviews four of Feasta's delegates to the COP28 climate summit which took place in Dubai, in November 2023: Hania Imran (Pakistan), Angel Smith (USA), Theresa O'Donohoe (Ireland) and Barbara McCarthy (Ireland). Topics discussed include:

- the influence of civil society on COP negotiations

- the potential for ‘side-treaties’ that develop alongside the UNFCCC process

- the shadow cast at the COP28 by war and militarisation

- the under-representation of delegates from war zones and Small Island States

- the dangerous power of corporate lobbyists

- the Loss and Damage Fund: pluses and minuses

- the manipulation of the negotiation process by some to suppress certain voices

- the complexity of organising protests during COPs

- the important work being done by Climate Action Network International

- and whether it’s better to attend or to boycott COPs

Thobile Chittenden, network co-lead of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll), speaks with Seán Ó Conláin about her early childhood at the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa and how that experience has influenced her, leading eventually to her decision to join the WEAll global amplification team. Topics covered in their conversation include the importance of people and communities being seen and recognised in order to heal from past traumas and abuses, the frustration generated by attempts to achieve progress within a corporate world which has not changed its core values, and the need to bring about global economic system change in order to support grassroots activism. Thobile and Seán also discussed the recent ‘Art of the Wellbeing Economy’ event that was held in Dublin in December 2025, as part of the WEAll Ireland Hub’s cultural creatives project.

David Somekh and Caroline Whyte interviewed Professor Jane Gray of Maynooth University Department of Sociology on her research on resilience in times of crisis. We discussed two projects that she recently led which explored the ways in which families coped with the wake of the Great Financial Crisis and, in the case of Ireland, how the Family Income Supplement affected them.

Topics discussed included differing understandings of poverty and hardship, the need to avoid placing all of the burden of overcoming poverty and other difficult challenges on individuals or individual households, the circumstances which make it particularly hard for families to 'bounce back' from adversity, the role of commons in helping people to meet their needs during times of crisis, and the importance of support that is broadly based, rather than narrowly targeted.

Seán Ó Conláin and Caroline Whyte spoke with Molly Scott Cato. Molly was formerly a Professor of Green Economics and speaks for the Green Party of England and Wales on Economy and Finance. She recently published a book on Sustainable Finance (Springer, 2022).

Between 2014 and 2020 Molly represented South West England and Gibraltar in the European Parliament. She was a member of the Parliament’s Economics and Monetary Policy committee and the Parliament’s rapporteur on sustainable finance. Molly studied PPE at Oxford University and took a PhD in Economics from the University of Wales. She is an expert on resilient local economies, cooperatives and social enterprise, sustainable finance, monetary policy and tax policy.

Topics covered in our discussion included Molly's experience as an MEP and her reflections on the European Parliament's activities, the dynamics within the UK which led to Brexit, the challenges involved in achieving environmental and social progress within flawed political systems, and the importance of the arts and culture in bringing about change.

In this month's podcast, David Somekh of the EHFF and Caroline Whyte spoke with Bogi Eliasen, the Director of Health at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies (CIFS). Bogi initiated the Nordic Health 2030 process and has a key role in both the global Future Proofing Health Index and Movement Health 2030, that aspires to improve health by applying a new health paradigm. His current focus is facilitating the shift and building bridges between the fields of personal and public health. He calls himself a knowledge broker, whose expertise lies in combining various fields of knowledge.

Conversation topics included whether the goal of healthcare should be to have a good healthcare service or good health, how to support the 90% in living more healthily and sustainably, the best measurements of health to use in Wellbeing Frameworks, and the fact that countries are a social construction and we need global action.