HE has earned a reputation as a maverick economist focused on ‘actual people’ rather than faceless digits and in the flesh (courtesy of Skype) Christian Felber is indeed far from your stock dull and elbow-patched academic.

Despite his lecturing chair at the University of Vienna, which he has held for ten years, he swiftly dismisses the label of ‘economist’; but not without warmth and a cheeky laugh.

“I’m not an economist - there’s no need to be afraid. I’m a publisher, a book writer, and speaker,” clarifies the Austrian-born thinker.

“I consider myself an autodidact who was always interested in the economy as a holistic approach.”

And, it soon emerges, he recently added consummate contemporary dancer to his growing catalogue of achievements. My deluge of baffled questions – what, where, how, with whom?- is quickly interrupted by a ping in my inbox.

A firm believer that actions speak louder than words he has dispatched a web link to his latest performance. The clip reveals the activist standing at the centre of an impressively large stage, locked in an arm hold Sumo-style with his partner before briskly pulling away and hurling himself in one seamless move to the ground.

That answers that then!

“A fulfilling life for me means experiencing everything including my feelings, my intuition, my body and that includes dancing, my spirit - and not specialising in one of these dimensions,” he explains unhurriedly, measuring every word.

He may be an eccentric but he is no raving babbler. “Dance was a search from my heart, I didn’t know what I was looking for and then I found it. I’m more passionate about it than ever.”

Felber was never one to do things by halves and whatever he has tackled over the decades the 43-year-old has truly conquered, amassing disciples and plaudits along the way.

A jack-of-all trades, although he points out he has only mastered dance “halfway”, he hoped to study universal sciences at university but no such wide-ranging course being available, he had to make do with a medley of Spanish, Psychology, Sociology and Political Sciences. Fresh out of education he published a volume of poetry before turning to journalism. These roundabout paths eventually led him to alternative economics, as a force for social change.

“A poet is capable of sucking the essence out of the whole in his or her extremely condensed message. A poet understand emotions, the economy, and psychology. It was my personal university to be a poet for a while.”

Appalled at what he saw as our broken down capitalism system – proven only too true by the economic crash in 2008 - which in his own words “creates a number of serious problems: unemployment, inequality, poverty, exclusion, hunger, environmental degradation and climate change", in 2000 he co-founded Attac Austria, a campaign group backing an alternative model: the Economy for the Common Good (ECG).

He has now outlined his proposal for implementing the new economic system in his latest book, Change Everything, which he will unveil at the Festival of Literature on May 11. In the tome, he expounds his theory, practical means of rolling out durable change and opens a window into how its basic tenets are bearing fruit among a radical community of businesses and universities.

“It’s a complete and consistent alternative to global capitalism,” he says. “It’s not just a model it’s a movement; there are thousands of individuals, companies and universities involved. The core of it is to put our economy in line with our highest values – human dignity, social justice, democracy and sustainability. These values are enshrined in our constitutions which say the common good shall be the goal of the economy. It converts capital into a means of achieving these goals. But at the moment we’re regarding capital and its increase as the goal.”

To realize this goal, the ECG proposes an economic system that "rewards economic stakeholders for behaving and organizing themselves in a humane, cooperative, ecological and democratic way".

This requires a fundamental shift (call it a soft revolution) in the way we operate as a society, right down to our democratic structure.

While only in its infancy, Felber is determined to see his masterplan for a brighter and fairer future through – and is already working on two new books to push his humane agenda.

“I consider myself as an instrument for societal and systemic change,” he adds, completely devoid of arrogance. “This is just the beginning. 15 years ago the majority was not asking for change. This shifted 10 years ago, people started asking for change. They realised it was not just an economic crisis or a crisis of meaning and value - it had too many faces. The whole system is wrong. Now the time is right for an alternative.”

Christian Felber will be at the Arts Centre on May 11 at 6.30pm. To book go to swindontheatres.co.uk.