Jacco van Loon is an astronomer at Keele University, previously at IoA Cambridge, University of Amsterdam and ESO Garching, and lives outside the pretty Cheshire village of Audlem. Their research attempts to uncover and interrogate the fundamental principles governing the behaviour of complex systems, with application to stellar mass loss, interstellar medium, star formation, galaxy structure and evolution, and the origins, nature and evolution of life. Jacco is the director of Keele Observatory and passionate about public engagement with research, art and the philosophy of science and the mind. They are politically active, a proud trade unionist and care deeply about research ethics, equity, diversity and inclusion. Besides their scientific publications they have published in The Conversation, poems in Consilience and written unpublished poetry.