Robert Poynton
A cartoony hand-drawn portrait of Robert Poynton

About Me

Sometimes I call myself a Marxist. A ‘Groucho Marxist’ – I am reluctant to belong to any ‘club’ that would have me as a member. 

I am English but have lived more of my life in Spain than England. 

I have been part of three start-ups but I am not an entrepreneur. 

I mash up ideas from improvisational theatre and complexity science but I am neither a performer nor a scientist. 

I have worked with the University of Oxford for over twenty years, but I am not an academic. 

I live and work in the betwixt and the between, on boundaries and in overlaps, in the muddle and the mess. 

I spend most of my days reading, writing, and talking – with everyone from the farmer next door to a film director in Dublin. I work in libraries but also in olive groves (which grounds me). However obliquely, it all feeds into the workshops and programmes I design and facilitate. 

I believe that playing around with things (and people) is more fruitful than trying to control them. My hope is that by doing so I can help people learn to enjoy uncertainty (rather than dread it) and feel just a little bit more alive.