Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist, writer, and speaker with a background in plant sciences, microbiology, ecology, and the history and philosophy of science. He received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He is a research associate of Oxford University and the Vrije University Amsterdam, and works closely with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) and the Fungi Foundation.

His book, Entangled Life, is a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, won the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize, and was nominated for a number of other prizes, including the British Book Awards and the Rathbones Folio Prize. It has been translated into thirty-two languages. Merlin is the presenter of Fungi: Web of Life, a giant screen documentary narrated by Björk.

Merlin’s research ranges from fungal biology, to the history of Amazonian ethnobotany, to the relationship between sound and form in resonant systems. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms. He is a musician and performs on the piano and accordion.

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