Jonathan Woolley
MA Cantab, MPhil, PhD
Jonathan Woolley
MA Cantab, MPhil, PhDHead of the Society and Environment Research Group (SERG)
Society and environment research group (SERG)
NRS, Northern Research Station, Bush Estate, Roslin, Scotland
About Jonathan Woolley
Jonathan currently works across the SERG’s Wellbeing and Land Use themes, leading projects on the public reception of commercial forestry and the cultural heritage value of Atlantic rainforests, as well as providing specialist advice on the application of behavioural science and ethnographic methods. Jonathan was awarded a PhD in 2018 from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Social Anthropology, and his ethnographic monograph – Common Sense in Environmental Land Management: Thinking Through English Land and Water – was published in 2020. Until October 2025, he led a Behavioural Insights Unit embedded within Defra’s Farming and Countryside Programme (FCP). He sits on the Leadership Group for GAEN – the Government Anthropology and Ethnography Network.
What Jonathan does
Jonathan’s responsibilities include the design, delivery and management of both qualitative and quantitative social science projects in support of sustainable forestry and nature restoration in UK and worldwide. Jonathan also oversees the management and resourcing of the Group, as well as setting the strategic direction and advising on all bidding across the Group’s main themes.
Affiliations
Badged member of the Government Social Research Profession.
Member of Natural Environment Social Research Network
Member of the Cross-Government Behavioural Science Network
Member of the Government Anthropology and Ethnography Network (GAEN).
Other Research
Cultural heritage & folklore – Health and wellbeing – Temperate rainforests – Climate change – Agroforestry – Land Use – Behavioural Science
Other Publications
Woolley, Jonathan. 2016. “Fieldwork in Lyonesse: Salvage Ethnography before the Anthropocene Floods.” King’s Review, 2016. https://www.kingsreview.co.uk/essays/fieldwork-in-lyonesse-salvage-ethnography-before-the-anthropocene-floods.
2017. “Mere Stardust: Animism, Totemism, and Substantively Western Concepts in British Druidry.” In The Mount Haemus Lectures Volume 3. Lewes, Sussex. https://druidry.org/resources/the-eighteenth-mount-haemus-lecture-the-elementary-forms-of-druidic-life-towards-a-moral-ecology-of-land-sea-and-sky.
2018a. “Hounded Out of Time: Black Shuck’s Lesson in the Anthropocene.” Environmental Humanities 10 (1)
2018b. “Practical Magic: The Political Economy of British Paganism, From Religious Affiliation Toward Popular Enchantment | Woolley | Implicit Religion.” Implicit Religion 21 (2): 180–201. https://doi.org/doi:10.1558/imre.37043.
2018c. “Rede of Reeds: Land and Labour in Rural Norfolk.” PhD Dissertation, Cambridge: University of Cambridge. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/273374.
2018d. “The Wires Crossed: What Dowsing Reveals about Environmental Knowledge in Britain.” Anthropology Today 34 (3): 22–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12436.
2019. Common Sense in Environmental Management: Thinking through English Land and Water. Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies. United Kingdom: Routledge.
2021a. “Druids and Jhakris: Conservation and Conversations between Spirits of Place and Spirit-Workers from Britain and Nepal.” In Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia. Routledge.
2021b. “‘Not All Druids Wear Robes’: Countercultural Experiences of Youth and the Revision of Ritual in British Druidry.” In Radical Transformations in Minority Religions. Routledge.
2024. “Orders of Magnitude: The Socio-Cultural Significance of Druidry for the English Landscape.” In Modern Religious Druidry: Studies in Paganism, Celtic Identity, and Nature Spirituality, edited by Ethan Doyle White and Jonathan Woolley, 73–95. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-63099-6_4.
Forthcoming. “Curious Government: Total Bureaucratisation and the Limits of Codesign in Post-Brexit Agri-environmental Policy Development.” In Preparation. Woolley, Jonathan, and R. Aída Hernández. 2014. “Book Reviews.” The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 32 (1): 121–24. https://doi.org/10.3167/ca.2014.320110.
Doyle White, Ethan, and Jonathan Woolley, eds. 2024. Modern Religious Druidry: Studies in Paganism, Celtic Identity, and Nature Spirituality. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-63099-6.