Paddy Woodworth is a Research Associate at Missouri Botanical Garden, an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the School of Languages and Literatures, University College Dublin, a member of the European Cultural Parliament, and a founder-member of the Irish Forum on Natural Capital. He worked as staff journalist at The Irish Times from 1988-2002. As a writer he has contributed to the International Herald Tribune, Vanity Fair, The Scientist, The Sunday Times, Ecological Restoration, The World Policy Journal and BBC Wildlife and many other publications. His essays have been published in Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature, the International Journal of Iberian Studies, the Annals of Missouri Botanical Garden, Ecology, and the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. He has broadcast for RTE, the BBC, Al Jazeera, and Spanish, US and other international radio and TV networks. Since 2008, he has worked as a specialist cultural guide for visitors to the Basque Country, in partnership with Jon Warren of San Sebastián Food (now Mimo San Sebastián), developing the ‘Discovering the Basque Country’ tour series. He also works as an editor for scientists who wish to reach a wide public readership. He has published The Basque Country (Signal Books 2007, Oxford University Press, 2008), a collection of essays on diverse aspects of the region, from fiestas in remote villages to the reinvention of the city of Bilbao through the Guggenheim museum. And Dirty War, Clean Hands: ETA, the GAL and Spanish Democracy (Yale University Press, 2002), an account of the impact on Spanish institutions and Basque society of the state terrorist strategy espoused by Spanish government ministers and generals to fight the Basque terrorist group ETA in the 1980s. His most recent book is Our Once and Future Planet: Restoring the World in the Climate Change Century (University of Chicago Press, 2013, 2015 paperback), a worldwide assessment of ecological restoration as a conservation strategy.
