Ashish Ghadiali

Ashish Ghadiali is Radical Ecology’s Founder/Director. He explores the intersections of racial justice, art and ecology through text, film, activism and performance. Moving image works include the film installations Can you tell the time of a running river? (2024), Invasion Ecology (2024), Planetary Imagination (2023) and the feature documentary, The Confession (2016). Performance works include Where do we go when we realise that we can’t go back to nature? (2024) and A Silent Walk (2023). Curatorial credits include the exhibition Against Apartheid (2023) at KARST and public programmes including Migrant Futurism (2023) at the Southbank Centre, Equilibrium (2022) at Serpentine and Sensing the Planet (2021) at Dartington Hall. He was a co-author of the paper, Quantifying the Human Cost of Global Warming (2023) for Nature Sustainability and is a frequent contributor on art, literature and the environment for the Guardian and The Observer. In 2021, he led on political strategy for the COP26 civil society coalition and was activist-in-residence at UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the study of racism and racialisation. He is currently working on a book, Dart River, for Hutchinson Heinemann. Through it, he explores the psychogeographies of empire in the corner of rural South-West England where he lives.

Debs Ashfield

Debs Ashfield is our Development Researcher. She is currently undertaking an AHRC-SWWDTP-funded PhD in Environmental Humanities, a collaborative project between the University of Exeter and the University of Southampton. Her interdisciplinary research spans critical technology studies, poetry, sound studies and environmental sciences, informed by a strong commitment to anti-colonial practice, environmental justice and community organising. At Radical Ecology, Debs leads on development research with a particular focus on capacity building—supporting the organisation’s growth through strategic partnerships, funding opportunities and infrastructure for long-term sustainability. She brings a relational approach to her work, centring inclusive practices and co-creative methodologies that foster resilience and autonomy within Radical Ecology’s environmental and cultural networks.

Iman Datoo

Iman Datoo is Head of Research and Community at Radical Ecology, where she brings a longstanding commitment to ecological justice and interdisciplinary practice. She has been part of Radical Ecology’s journey from the beginning—co-facilitating Equilibrium at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, contributing as an artist to Against Apartheid and Invasion Ecology, and crafting our low-carbon website. Most recently, she led the 100 Year Care Plan (2025), commissioned by Natural England. Her work spans art, systems, and speculative ecologies, using botany and cartography to explore the relationships between plants, soils and people. Imagination is central to her approach, guiding investigations into more-than-human agency and futures beyond extractivism. Recent projects include Movement is Natural (2024), Kinnomic Botany (2020-22) and Soil-Brain, Gut-Brain (2023). In this role, Iman is overseeing the evolution of Radical Ecology’s research questions and networks, while also pursuing a funded PhD across UCL Slade, UCL Bartlett and the Eden Project.

Megan Roberts

Megan Roberts is our Media Producer. Meg is a filmmaker and artist whose practice is rooted in collaboration and co-design. Through participatory filmmaking, she amplifies marginalised voices and explores urgent social and environmental issues in partnership with communities, researchers, and advocacy organisations. She has worked with groups including Devon and Cornwall Refugee Support, Say No to Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), The Routes to Wellness Project, Cornwall Climate Care, and 99p Films. Her recent three-screen film, In Conversation with Plymouth Hoe, created for The Box’s Re-Imagining the Film Archives programme, exemplifies her approach. Developed in response to the anti-immigration unrest of 2024, the piece layers archival footage with contemporary interviews to explore how public space in Plymouth is shaped and reclaimed through power, class, civic joy, and shared memory. Megan’s practice centres civic joy as a tool for resilience, exploring spaces where collective care and resistance thrive. Her current commission for Plymouth Culture’s Sea for Yourself programme marks a shift into installation-based, co-created works that place communities at the heart of both process and outcome. She joins Radical Ecology to develop a film unit, furthering community exploration of the intersections between art, ecology, and social change - using film to challenge divisive narratives and support more inclusive, hopeful futures.

Laila Shah

Laila Shah is our Communications and Research Producer. A recent graduate from the University of Oxford’s Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology (MSc) programme, she brings a deep engagement with storytelling, dreaming and alternative modes of expanding imagination as central to knowledge production. Her research interests span from engaging with the intersections of decoloniality and surrealism, DIY cinema as a spatially-located practice to ecologically informed and “pluriversal” approaches to making in museum contexts. She also explores digital ecologies and multi-modal methods, including photography and participatory artmaking, for experimenting with the unbounded nature of space and cityscapes. She has previously worked with the Fowler Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum, as well as community led organisations including the Bristol Palestine Museum and Cultural Centre and the Cube Microplex.

Megan Wilson-De La Mare

Megan Wilson-De La Mare is our Studio and Operations Manager. Her photographic background and education, as well as engagement with participatory practices, informs her approach to developing a community-centred programme. Her previous experience spans operations and arts administration, education, photography, and community engagement. Her exploration into participatory practice began during her residency with Knowle West Media Centre and project Salt of the Earth in 2018, which led her to form deep local relationships and explore the history through personal stories and archival material. Her writing similarly has explored themes of collaborative practice, play therapy, and performance photography, and from 2020-2023 she contributed to Loupe magazine as Online Editor.

• All India Disaster Mitigation Institute
• Borneo Bengkel
• Borneo Laboratory
• Counterpoints Arts
• Devon and Cornwall Refugee Support
• EMPIRE LINES
• Esmee Fairburn Foundation
• Institute for Climate Change and Development
• Jabulani
• KARST
• Lankelly Chase
• LIFT festival
• Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange
• Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation
• Open Society Foundations
• Plymouth Culture
• Plymouth Youth Music Service
• Southcombe Barn
• The Apricot Centre
• The Box
• The Center for Deep Listening, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• The Diversity Business Incubator
• Thelma Hulbert Gallery
• Tomorrow’s Warriors
• Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the study of Racism and Racialisation, UCL
• University of Exeter, Global Systems Institute
• University of Plymouth, The Arts Institute
• We Are Lewisham
• Zebra Collective

Report: Quantifying the Human Cost of Global Warming ↗. Our study on projected movement in the human climate niche locates the origins of delayism in historic usage of the climate and economic model and puts forward a bold new approach for quantifying the human cost of global warming that could drive a sea-change in policy and justice. This paper has been extensively covered in the global media as summarised by Altmetric here.

Behind the Report: Against Apartheid on Springer Nature Research Communities.

Report: Global Tipping Points ↗. Global Tipping Points is led by Professor Tim Lenton from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute with the support of more than 200 researchers from over 90 organisations in 26 countries, including Radical Ecology’s director Ashish Ghadiali. The Global Tipping Points Report was launched at COP28 on 6 December 2023. The report is an authoritative assessment of the risks and opportunities of both negative and positive tipping points in the Earth system and society.

Report: Towards a Framework for Environmental Justice Report ↗

Summary: Natural England’s reports on EDI in nature ↗

This website aims to archive, reflect, and build momentum for Radical Ecology’s cultural programs while minimising the energy used to access our online content. Designed and developed by artist Iman Datoo, this two-year exploration combines her world-building and archival practice with research and training in low-carbon principles and static site development. The result is an infrastructure driven by encounter, aligning with the values of an organisation committed to expanding climate justice activities and deepening global networks of science, art, and activism.

In our research into low-carbon web design, we learned that if the internet were a nation, it would rank as the fourth-largest polluter (Source: Sustainable Web Manifesto) in the world. Additionally, the average size of a web page has doubled over the past 10 years (Source: HTTP Archive). As the internet becomes more efficient, our reliance on it grows, especially since there are no physical constraints to its energy use. High-resolution images, video streaming, and interactive applications no longer require individual devices to store extensive data; instead, this data is transmitted to and from data centres.

To reduce energy use, we implemented a static site where every page is pre-built once, rather than being generated dynamically with each visit. This eliminates the need for dedicated servers. We use system typefaces, which load fonts from the user’s operating system, removing the need for custom fonts. Additionally, we use an image compression technique called dithering throughout the website, which uses fewer colours and patterns of pixels to simulate gradients, resulting in smaller, more efficient image files.

Initially, implementing a low-carbon website seemed like it would require trade-offs or sacrifices, particularly as Radical Ecology expands its online presence. However, we discovered that lower-carbon sites are higher performing, and the aesthetics of low-carbon elements — such as default fonts and dithered imagery — are visually captivating and so have become a part of Radical Ecology’s identity both online and offline.

The intention for redeveloping the site was always community-centred. The goal was to build and sustain a resilient and dynamic infrastructure that could allow networks to organically emerge. It has been important to create multiple access routes to view the same content, so different audiences can find the work accessible through language familiar to them. We believe that it is from this familiarity that newness can start to emerge. A tagging system creates links between projects, ideas, and strands of work, so visitors can explore and be led to projects and ideas different from those they might experience in their day to day.

Moving forward, we are interested in different ways of quantifying the carbon cost and benefit of our work, and the challenges surrounding quantification. For example, data is incredibly subjective - we may be measuring the impact of the carbon load of our website, but linking a page to a video hosting platform is ‘offloading’ the carbon elsewhere. This isn’t a perfect system; it is an attempt at movement towards greater consciousness and a first start that is iterative and will continue to grow and develop.

This line of inquiry will remain a strand of active research in Radical Ecology, where we aim to grow our network of people who are interested in and/or have experience in low-carbon design, whether approaching this from a web designer, developer, artist, or organisational perspective. Please reach out. We’ll be exploring the bottlenecks that limit the implementation of low-carbon practices while using it as a space to share ideas.

For additional information about low-carbon websites, take a look at LowTechMagazine, Branch Magazine, and Lowwwcarbon.com, as well as the Green Web Library. These resources have greatly shaped our thinking and strategy for this project.

If you’d like to learn more about the project or join the webinars, please get in touch with Iman Datoo.