Professor Chris Butters

The American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Visiting Lecturer from Norway

Chris Butters is a visiting professor from the University of Oslo in Norway. His visiting lectureship at CSB and SJU is made possible by a grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation as well as co-sponsorship by The Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement and the CSB/SJU Department of History. 

Butters is spending the 2009 spring semester at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, teaching a political science class on sustainable planning and community development. He is also giving talks and participating in conferences in Minnesota, New York and other locations.

Chris Butters is a worldly scholar. As a consultant and designer of sustainable communities and buildings in Europe, Scandinavia and Asia, Butters spent a decade in Bhutan as a consultant architect for schools and hospitals. He is a published author, writing on issues of development as it relates to ecology and local culture, and has taught in many places.

Born in South Africa in 1950, Butters received a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1978 from the University of Montpellier, France, and a postgraduate degree in energy planning in 1979 from the University of Oslo. He is a course director at the University of Oslo, and an architect and consultant for GAIA.

Public Lecture Presented by Prof. Butters on February 18, 2009