About

Who is Ruth Irwin?

Ruth Irwin started puzzling over the relation between economic growth and climate emissions in the 1980s. She wrote a Phd at the University of Glasgow titled Heidegger’s threshold/ climate change and education. Since then, Ruth Irwin has written several books on climate change, philosophy and economics, edited 3 collections on philosophy and climate change, and public policy, and written over 60 peer reviewed book chapters and journal articles.

She teaches courses on globalisation, climate change, philosophy, colonialism, and post-colonialism, education, policy and economics. Ruth Irwin is an author and Professor. She held senior leadership roles at the University of Fiji and the University of Aberdeen. She was an Expert Speaker to Unesco on Biodiversity and Climate Change, and attended the Fijian government conference on Climate Change before the 2016 Cop 16 Paris Agreement. She has experience in policy development and was a government advisor on education for the Fiji Higher Education Commission, and the Ministry of Education and Environment.

Ruth’s research focuses on climate change and its implications for philosophy, economics, and policy. These are the subjects for three of her books. The most recent is Economic Futures; Climate Change and Modernity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024). She edited Climate Change and Philosophy Transformational Possibilities (Bloomsbury, 2011) and wrote Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change (Bloomsbury, 2008). She also edited the Encyclopedia entry on Education and Climate Change.

Ruth’s policy work includes the edited collections Another Decade of New Zealand Education (WMIR, 2010) edited with Professor Martin Thrupp, and Beyond the Free Market (Dunmore Press, 2014) edited with David Cooke.