John is Professor of Green Political Economy at the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queens University Belfast. He has a BA and MA from University College Dublin and a PhD from the University of Glasgow. His areas of research include green political economy and green economics; post-growth political economy; economic practices and sustainability, normative aspects of sustainable development; governance for sustainable development; the greening of citizenship and civic republicanism; green politics in Ireland, North and South; the Transition Movement; the politics, ethics and economics of peak oil and climate change; the governance of science and innovation; the link between academic knowledge, political activism and policy making; trust, legitimacy and public policy; citizenship, public policy and governance; post-conflict politics and political economy in Northern Ireland and theories and practices of reconciliation in Northern Ireland.
His books include, Rethinking Green Politics: Nature, Virtue and Progress (1999) – [winner of the Political Studies Association Mackenzie prize for best book published in political science] – Environment and Social Theory, 2nd edition, (2007); and Citizenship, Sustainability and Environmental Research: Q methodology and Local Exchange Trading Systems (2000). His co-edited books include The International Encyclopaedia of Environmental Politics (2001), Sustaining Liberal Democracy (2002); Europe, Globalisation and Sustainability (2004), The Nation-State and the Global Ecological Crisis (2005) and Contemporary Environmental Politics (2006),The Transition to Sustainable Living and Practice (2009), Climate change ethics, rights, and policies (2013), Environmental Philosophy: The Art of Living in a World of Limits (2013). He latest book is The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World (2012, Oxford University Press).