Eric Zencey

Eric Zencey holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy, the history of science, and American government.  He has pursued a career as a writer as well as scholar and teacher, having published a best-selling novel and numerous essays that bring together ecology, history, economics, and political theory in the effort to illuminate the conditions under which we might achieve a sustainable civilization that retains civil liberties and democratic political forms.  A Guggenheim Fellow in environmental writing in 1999, he has also held Fellowships from the Bellagio-Rockefeller and the Bogliasco Foundations. Currently he is a Research Fellow in the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design at Washington University, as well as a Fellow of the Center for Research on Vermont and the Center for Rural Studies at the University of Vermont.  As the founding Coordinator of the Vermont Genuine Progress Indicator Project he led the successful effort to have the state of Vermont adopt the GPI, replacing reliance on Gross Domestic Product with a sustainability-based metric that is increasingly being used in policy and budgeting decisions.