WOMADelaide Considers The Future With 2015 Planet Talks Line-Up

The 2015 WOMADelaide festival just keeps getting bigger, with the announcement today of the full list of speakers set to take the stage for the event's Planet Talks sessions, led by renowned explorer Sylvia Earle and featuring local environmental warriors Bob Brown, Andrew Denton and Rod Quantock.

Earle is regarded around the world as one of the planet's foremost living eco-legends, having founded several pro-environmental organisations such as Mission Blue, Sylvia Earle Alliance and Deep Ocean Exploration And Research as well as being National Geographic's explorer-in-residence. Earle has led more than 100 expeditions and spent in excess of 7000 hours beneath the waves in her pursuit of understanding and protecting the planet's marine environments.

She will be joined on the expert side of things by activist, writer and philospher Vandana Shiva as well as US-based environmental journalist Simran Sethi for a series of panels over the three-day WOMADelaide weekend, hosted by ABC Science broadcasters Robyn Williams and Bernie Hobbs. The international science boffins will be backed up in the panels by thirteen brilliant local minds from science to the arts including ex-Greens leader Brown, pop-culture icon Denton, ABC TV science journalist, palaeontologist and RiAUS director Paul Willis, veteran comedian Quantock, author, scientist and ex-chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Biology Dr Charlie Veron, UniSA expert Professor Paul Sutton, 2003 Australian Of The Year and Telethon Institute For Child Health Research founder Professor Fiona Stanley, enviro-scientist, adventurer and author Tim Jarvis, EPICCA co-founder Cecilia Woolford, comedian and TV presenter Hannah Gadsby, UniSA PhD researcher Emily Johnston, University of Adelaide professor and Environmental Institute deputy director Professor Bronwyn Gillanders, and Adelaide Uni food futures expert Peter Langridge.

The full breakdown of topics, panels and time slots will be unveiled early next year.

WOMADelaide hits the city's Botanic Park from March 6-9, 2015. See our dedicated event page for more information.