Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist, speaker, and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. Entangled Life, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, has been translated into 30 languages, and was named a TIME Magazine Must-Read Book. He is the presenter of the documentary Fungi: Web of Life, 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. By examining fungi on their own terms, he reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works. Entangled Life was described by The Wall Street Journal as “food for the soul”; by The Guardian as “brilliant” and “entrancing”; by The Observer as “wondrous,” and by The Spectator as “truly astounding.” It won the Wainwright Prize and the Royal Society Science Book Prize. It was nominated for several other accolades, including the British Book Awards Book of the Year 2021 and the Rathbones Folio Prize.

Merlin 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 the Vrije University Amsterdam, works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), and sits on the advisory board of the Fungi Foundation.

A keen brewer and fermenter, Merlin 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.