Bradley Parrish

Background

About Bradley Parrish

I am a scholar-practitioner working at the grassroots level on creative collaborations for sustainable development. The importance of entrepreneurship, knowledge exchange, communities of practice, and wisdom culture are of particular interest to me. I am committed to contributing to projects that bridge divides: between society and nature, scholarship and practice, science and local wisdom, the privileged and the marginalized. I spent over a decade in academia in the US and UK exploring theories of development and sustainability as a student, researcher, writer, and lecturer, with a particular focus on sustainable entrepreneurship. Academically, I approach these topics from an interdisciplinary perspective with an emphasis on leadership for sustainable development in marginalized communities. My interest is in exploring innovative practices for sustainable transitions at the micro level of entrepreneurship, the meso level of networks, and macro level of ecological economics. Accepting an invitation to move to Indonesia, I co-founded a sustainability-driven enterprise and have been the creative director for over a decade. During this time I experimented with a number of collaborative community initiatives. These experiences have been rich and inspiring, and I am now working to bring together the insights gained in the interest of contributing to the theory and practice of development and sustainability informed by the Nusantara philosophies of self in community. Surveying the state of the field, it is notable that most attention is devoted to searching for technological fixes to biophysical problems and material inequalities that are caused by certain features of human culture. Human culture is founded on deeply held values that frame knowledge and are constituted through practices. These can only evolve collaboratively with others. This is why it seems urgent, fascinating, and ripe with potential to explore grassroots innovations in communities of practice by means of creative collaborative knowledge exchange. On the flip side of innovation, there is also a need to recall, appreciate, sustain, and apply anew the practices of humanity’s age-old traditions of wisdom culture. The way forward requires both the new and the renewed. Exploring these paths to see where they lead us is a fascinating journey, and one that is well-worth taking for the sake of ourselves and others, now and for the future.