Dr Emma Kidd

Emma co-led the Ecological Design Thinking program at Schumacher College, focusing on meta-design as a practice that fosters awareness of the interconnectedness between being, knowing, and doing. She is passionate about practices that cultivate attention and awareness, allowing for a deeper understanding of life—human and non-human—and reclaiming experiential, embodied ways of knowing, in contrast to modernity’s abstract, life-blind frameworks.

After a successful international career in clothing design and product development, Emma joined Schumacher College in 2008 as a student in the Master’s programme in Holistic Science. She specialized in Goethean approaches to understanding nature, particularly the work of Henri Bortoft on the nature of wholeness. Emma continues to explore Bortoft’s Dynamic Way of Seeing, which became the foundation of her first book, First Steps to Seeing: A Path Towards Living Attentively.

Her doctoral research focused on applying holistic principles through a phenomenology of practice. She designed a public intervention aimed at reducing the overconsumption of clothing. Emma is currently working on her second book, which explores how to transcend the limitations of modernity by reconnecting with, thinking with, and designing with life.