Paul Mobbs & MEIR:
About my work
What began in 1992 as a temporary job has for some strange reason endured ever since; in the process taking me all around Britain, into Eastern Europe, and as far away as the Caribbean. In this page – part blog, part biography – I’ll outline a little of the history of that long period of work, and what is coming next.
In science communication mode presenting the Energy & Food workshop, Llandeilo, 2008
I am a researcher; as as a product of that work, a writer and lecturer; and running through all of that, as a result of my upbringing and first employment, an engineer. I read quickly, I remember a lot, I can write equally voluminously on what I discover, and relate that – with graphics and graphs – to the public. What interests me is systems, and how finding evidence, and the analysis of it, can let us understand how they were built and how we can change them.
What I find miraculous is that (at the time of writing) for the last 27 years I have managed to work as a freelance writer and researcher, with an ‘enviable’ level of freedom to choose the topics I work on, and have had the pleasure of travelling to some wonderful places in pursuit of that work. I appreciate the rarity of that experience these days.
‘Statistics communication mode’ – working on the Free Range Network's ‘Fracking Truth’ stall,
Green Gathering, 2016
After 27 years working professionally I’ve got rather a large back catalogue of work to describe. For that reason the content of this study is split into six sections, each reflecting a different ‘era’ in the development of my work. And, as no era is ever tightly defined, they do overlap:
⛭ Beginnings: 1984–1991, ‘(a very) young apprentice’
⛭ Phase I: 1992–2007, ‘environmental investigator’
⛭ Phase II: 1999-2006, ‘community-Linux-hacker’
⛭ Phase III: 2004–2017, ‘ecological futurologist’
⛭ Phase IV: 2009–2018, ‘fracktivist’
⛭ Phase V: 2017–, ‘planetary hospice worker?’