Caspar Hewett is the Director of The Great Debate. He has twenty years of research and management experience in academia, industry and the private sector and has taught and lectured a variety of subjects including mathematics, numerical methods, hydraulics, catchment management, philosophy of science, environmental issues and English as a Foreign language. He is currently a Visiting Researcher at Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability and is a founder member of the North East of England's United Nations Regional Centre of Expertise in Education for Sustainable Development (RCE North East), for which he is also currently acting as Director.
Caspar was a member of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Peer Review College July 2005 - 2008 and was a NESTA Crucible Awardee 2006. He has held consecutive visiting fellowships at Newcastle University, at the Institute for Research on Environment and Sustainability (2006 - 2008) and Sir Joseph Swan Institute for Energy Research (2008-2010). In the past few years he has received a number of invitations both nationally and internationally to speak and teach on interdisciplinary approaches to water resources research including an OECD workshop in Honolulu "Improving the Balance Between Economic Agricultural Production and Environmental Quality through Enhanced Decision Making," 2004; workshop on Catchment Area Management in Istanbul, 2005; visiting fellow at Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at University of Iowa, 2007 (see report) and invited representative of the Eden catchment at the United Nations HELP (Hydrology for the Environment, Life and Policy) conference in 2007.
Caspar's current activities include environmental engineering consultancy and development of the North East Education for Sustainable Development programme. His research interests include finite difference methods, computational hydraulics, interventions in the landscape to reduce flood risk and nutrient export from catchments, the notion of progress, modern theories of human nature and sustainable development.
