About

Our Mission

The International Bateson Institute, registered in Stockholm, is a non-profit foundation for transcontextual research in ecology, economy, social change, health, education, and art. The International Bateson Institute supports a new kind of research that encourages and incubates projects, which examine the interactions within complex systems.

The aim of this research is to increase our ability to take into account the many relationships that coexist in any context of living things. In addition to providing much-needed perspective to existing research institutions, the findings of the International Bateson Institute projects are presented as seminars, media, and artistic exhibitions, which engage culture and education simultaneously in public spaces, for all ages.

The International Bateson Institute generates and gives access to information that offers a wider vision. The focus of IBI inquiry is on the interrelational dynamics between and interdepencies among systems.

The IBI research involves recognizing how patterns repeat and reflect each other across multiple contexts and across multiple systems – understanding these systems’ maintenance and renewal will be critical in the coming decades.

The underlying premise of the IBI is to address and experiment with how we perceive. Our mandate is to look in other ways so that we might find other species of information and new patterns of connection not visible through current methodologies. We call this information “Warm Data.”

The Board

Nora Bateson

Nora Bateson

President of the IBI and Board Member -- Filmmaker, writer, educator, Sweden, USA, Canada - Certified Warm Data Lab Host & Trainer

Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and educator, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. Her work asks the question “How we can improve our perception of the complexity we live within, so we may improve our interaction with the world?” An international lecturer, researcher and writer, Nora wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson. Her work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.
More...
The IBI integrates the sciences, arts and professional knowledge to create a qualitative inquiry of the integration of life. Nora is the president of the International Bateson Institute, directing research projects that require multiple contexts of research. interdependent processes. Asking, “How we can create a context in which to study the contexts?” An impressive team of international thinkers, scientists and artists have been brought together by the IBI to generate an innovative form of inquiry, which Nora coined “Transcontextual Research”.

As an educator she has developed curricula for schools in Northern California, and produced and directed award winning multimedia projects on intercultural and ecological understanding. Her work, which has been presented at the world’s top universities, is described as “offering audiences a lens through which to see the world that effects not only the way we see, but also the way we think”.  Nora’s work in facilitating cross-disciplinary discussions is part of her research into what she calls, “the ecology of the conversation”. Her speaking engagements include keynote addresses and lectures at international conferences and universities on a wide range of topics that span the fields of anti-fascism, ecology, education, the arts, family therapy, leadership and many more aspects of advocacy for living systems–she travels between conversations in different fields bringing multiple perspectives into view to reveal larger patterns.

Memberships and Awards:

Member: Club of Rome. Board Member: Tallberg Foundation, Fellow of Lindsifarne Foundation, Bateson Idea Group (BIG), Human Potential Foundation. Awards: Sustainable Thompkins Ecology Award, Winner Spokane Film Festival, Winner Santa Cruz Film Festival, Media Ecology Award.

Nicole Boyer

Nicole Boyer

IBI Board Member -- Facilitator of Systemic Change; Better Futures Foresight

Nicole is a scenario thinker, teacher, and facilitator of systemic change projects. She enables diverse leaders— from across sectors and political perspectives— to think together and create breakthroughs around complex challenges.  As a strategic foresight expert, Nicole has been called a “pathfinder for leaders facing disruptive change” and a “pragmatic idealist.” Nicole was named one of the top 10 female futurists worldwide for her “ability to help leaders reframe what’s possible and feel empowered to shape the future we all want.”

Over her 25-year career, Nicole has done strategic transformation work in over a dozen industries and sectors on everything from the future of famine, fashion, to fast-moving goods. She has worked with senior executives and directors in organizations such as: P&G, Dupont, Cargill, Masterfoods, Bunge, L’OREAL, the World Bank, UNESCO, research institutions like DARPA, advised many government agencies, and worked on the future of cities from San Francisco, Detroit, to Dubai.

More ...
Nicole also enjoys working with smaller, innovative, civic sector organizations—from the WaterNow Alliance to urban think-tanks like SPUR—to aboriginal communities like the Haida and Nisga’a Nations in northern British Columbia seeking to reimagine rural resiliency. For more about her work, see Adaptive Edge.

Most recently she co-led ConnectSF, a 50-year scenario and vision process for transforming San Franciscos’s transportation and land use plans. Navigating a highly polarized context, ConnectSF resulted in focusing billions of dollars of investments, and trillions over the next few decades; and most critically, more adaptive planning capacities to deal with the uncertainties ahead.

Nicole learned her unique craft at Global Business Network (GBN), a pioneering think-tank in San Francisco, best known for its network of important future thinkers and cross-sector convening where it was not uncommon to have Amnesty International at the same table as Royal Dutch Shell. In the late 1990s, Nicole worked in venture capital in Singapore financing digital infrastructure, an early blended finance challenge. The 1997 Asian financial crisis catalyzed her vocation to improve our ability to anticipate and prepare for future disruptions.  Before that, she was a pollster, market researcher, and political speechwriter in Canada. Nicole earned a B.A and M.A. in public policy and political science from the University of British Columbia (Honours), where her research was on the politics of personal data and the unintended consequences of the network society.

Lastly, Nicole loves teaching and creating high impact learning experiences for leaders.  She has led senior leaders on many “learning journeys” or future immersion experiences in Silicon Valley, Brazil, China, Canada, Mexico, France, Egypt, and India. Nicole has taught scenario planning and systems thinking in many places including Stanford Business School; and she was Program Director at CEDEP-INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. She recently served on the Board of Presidio Graduate School, which pioneered the sustainable MBA.  Nicole is a contributor of the influential Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century.

An explorer in spirit, fascinated by our diverse planet, Nicole has lived in: Singapore, Paris, and San Francisco (twice), and spent much time in the global south. Originally from Vancouver BC, her hobbies include: sailing (she raced for Canada’s national development team), hiking, reading, writing, and cooking with her husband, friends and family.  Nicole is now stretching her cognitive limits by studying Mandarin to keep up with her six-year old daughter who is fast becoming a native speaker.

Tom Cummings

Tom Cummings

IBI Board Member -- Communication and leadership expert, Founder Leading Ventures B.V. , Netherlands

Tom is an executive board and senior management adviser. He is also a creative partner, designer and process facilitator for strategic visioning, business performance and leadership development programs. He works both independently and in collaboration with faculty from leading business schools and consulting firms.

Tom is known for his ability to bring new insights, sharp contrasts and fresh perspectives to his client engagements. He draws on 25 years of working with leaders and teams across a range of academic disciplines, industries and financial services.

More...
Tom has served as Global Head of Learning and Organization at Unilever; as Executive Vice President for Leadership Development at ABN AMRO Bank; and as project leader and adviser on Planning and Learning in companies such as Shell, Compass Group, Fortis, Marakon, and BUPA. Tom has created and co-designed a number of successful business transformation and learning vehicles including Cambridge Energy Research Associates; Executive Learning Partnership; Common Purpose Nederland; European Climate Foundation; and the Global Alliance for Banking on Values.

Tom’s work has involved him as a designer and catalyst in hundreds of projects and board retreats across many cultures. He works with people who wish to engage with complexity and who want to learn how to move between and across different perspectives. The approach helps to integrate experience and anticipate challenges. His work encourages leaders to be present and mindful of their personal impact while sustaining a perspective on their legacy in the wider world. Tom has outlined his approach in his book leadership landscapes co-authored with dr. James Keen (Palgrave Macmillan 2008).

Currently, Tom is a board member of the Tallberg Foundation, a member of the Nyenrode Business University Corporate Governance Initiative, and director of Leading Ventures B.V. Other current assignments include work on a series of Pioneering Journeys for FMO, the Dutch Development Bank; work with the Amsterdam Institute of Finance; and an ongoing engagement with Triodos Bank.

Erik Graffman

Erik Graffman

IBI Board Member -- Relational Psychologist

Phillip Guddemi

Phillip Guddemi

IBI Board Member - Anthropologist, President of Bateson Idea Group, USA - Certified Warm Data Lab Host

Phillip Guddemi is a cultural anthropologist and cybernetic thinker, who has been grappling with Gregory Bateson’s epistemology ever since studying with Bateson as an undergraduate at U.C. Santa Cruz in the 1970s. He is the President of the Bateson Idea Group, the California nonprofit organization which promotes Gregory Bateson’s intellectual legacy and is responsible to handle his intellectual property rights and work with his multiple archives. Phillip Guddemi has been Managing Editor of the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing.

He has written a book, Gregory Bateson on Relational Communication: From Octopuses to Nations (Switzerland, Springer, 2020). It is part of the Biosemiotics series, and it explores in detail a letter Gregory Bateson wrote linking animal communication to the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the height of that crisis. Topics of his past publications include the problem of conscious purpose, rethinking the cybernetics of power, how Gregory Bateson’s 1936 culture study Naven prefigured second-order cybernetics, and the use in more recent anthropology of Gregory Bateson’s more systemic ideas.

More...
He has also republished with commentary a number of Gregory Bateson’s lesser-known unpublished materials, ranging from biology to a metalogue called “Is there a conspiracy”?  Most recently he has worked on Gregory Bateson’s work on octopus from a biosemiotic perspective.

Phillip Guddemi’s graduate work at the University of Michigan, where he received his Ph.D., was with Roy Rappaport who used Batesonian and cybernetic ideas in studies of ritual and ecology in Oceania.  Inspired by Rappaport and Bateson’s researches, his own fieldwork in anthropology has included studies of art, ritual, and subsistence in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea (upriver from where Gregory Bateson worked in the 1930s).  As a result of this ethnographic work, he was the recipient of a Mellon Fellowship for a year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  As an anthropologist he has also worked on oral history and ethnicity in the Republic of Macedonia.

Göran Janson

Göran Janson

IBI Board Member & Coordinator of Warm Data Labs for the IBI - Certified Warm Data Lab Host

Göran Janson is a social entrepreneur, coach, mentor and adviser to management boards and individual leaders, as well as a founder of several companies and foundations. He has more than 40 years of experience in fields of research, development, product management, marketing and sales, business development, and executive management of which he has spent 30+ years as CEO, CTO, and service on boards as member and chairperson.

In his work as a researcher, systems architect, and computer scientist, his knowledge and experience were applied to architecture and to the development of very complex missions and of critical safety systems, where humans are integral and interdependent parts of the systems.

More...
Humans and living systems, in general, have always been a fundamental source of inspiration and interest for Göran. In addition to earning degrees in electronics and software engineering, he also studied human anatomy, medicine, and psychology.
Fanny Marell

Fanny Marell

IBI Board Member -- Social worker and psychotherapist, Stockholm, Sweden - Certified Warm Data Lab Host

Fanny Marell is a social worker, a licenced psychotherapist, as well as teacher and supervisor in psychotherapy with main focus on family therapy, systemic and social constructionist thinking.

At present, Fanny is working, in her own company, with supervision, psychotherapy and education. In her work, Fanny emphasizes the importance of context and mutual collaboration and to understand situations and people in context and relationship; to include yourself as a helper and consider your own interaction. In addition, reflecting on what we verbalize and how. What kind of stories am I part of and co-creating right now?

More...
She is also member in a group which tries to implement a diagnosis- and drug-critical perspective as an alternative to predominant public health care paradigm.

Additionally, Fanny is a member of the editorial board of the Nordic family therapy journal “Fokus på Familien” and she also writes articles for different journals.

Present areas of interest are:

  • Psychiatric Diagnostics – Why has this become so important? Why is this such a big phenomenon right now in our society?
  • New Public Management and its impact on the public sector. How does NPM affect the relationship between people working in public care and people who seek public healthcare.
  • Science and research. What is considered good and right knowledge today in our society? Why? How is this process constructed?
  • Another issue of interest is the migration flows we currently have and questions interconnected to it such as economy, ownership, history, religion, integration, radicalization, etc.

Fanny has a long experience working in the public sector. She started out as a clinical social worker and then she worked as a family therapist in an institution for adolescents with complex psychiatric concerns. She has also worked as family psychotherapist in psychiatric polyclinic for children, adolescents and their families and as a family psychotherapist at a public specialist centre for young people with eating disorders.

Fanny has also been the president of the Stockholm Family- and system oriented Therapy Association.

Homepage: www.fannymarell.se (includes links to my published articles)

Mai Mosli

Mai Mosli

IBI Board -- Principal Family Therapist, Family Therapy Institute, Singapore - Certified Warm Data Lab Host

Maimunah Mosli is currently the Principal Family Therapist leading the PPIS Family Therapy Institute. She has been working in PPIS for the last sixteen years. She obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work with Honours from Curtin University, Perth Western Australia in 2003. While pursuing her degree, she worked with the Muslim Women Support Centre of Western Australia where the bulk of her work includes helping Muslim immigrants who sought refuge by coming to Australia.

Coupled with her experience and interest in helping Malay-Muslim families, Maimunah obtained her Masters in Family Systemic Psychotherapy awarded by Middlesex University and Institute of Family Therapy (UK) in 2008.  She too obtained her Diploma in Clinical Supervision from Counselling and Care centre in 2010.

More...
Being the first Muslim family psychotherapist in Singapore and upon completing her Masters, Maimunah continued to be passionate about cultural sensitive practices and has been an active member of Association of Family Therapy (Singapore) since 2008. In 2010, she was instrumentally involved in organising the ‘Generating Conversation’ conference in 2010. Her beliefs in collaborative work saw her once again being involved in organising a conference in collaboration with Singapore Association of Counsellors and Association of Marital and Family Therapy, where she now serves as President of the association for consecutive 2 terms. A signature conference was organised where the association humbly hosted international speakers for their Context Conference in 2015.

Her passion for working on women’s empowerment issue was seen in her contribution to a response to CEDAW by being a member of the Committee of Empowering Muslim Women of PPIS. Now, she is a member of the Fathers Action Network. Her work with less privileged individuals and families has grown in her contributions and active involvement with the efforts by Dads for Life movement in Singapore. This has clearly portrayed her ability to work across gender and culture.

A highly reflexive therapist and clinical supervisor, Maimunah now provides both individual and group supervision to a team of social workers at PPIS using systemic ideas. Her years of experience and particular interest in cross cultural practices have made her opinions matter in the field of family therapy. Her constant network with other trainers and specialists in the family therapy field provides her with the constant up-keeping and know-how knowledge of the sector’s development. Today, she is accorded membership of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden.

The development of PPIS Family Therapy Institute is a witness to her commitment towards the growth of family therapy in Asia. This is further evident in her involvement with Asian Academy of Family Therapy based in Hong Kong where she was appointed as Honorary Member in 2015. Maimunah has edited two book entitled ‘The Rhythm of Misfits in Families” and ‘Between Spaces” written by fellow therapist at the institute. This has advance her work to South East Asia region, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia.

Advisory Board

Carlos Alvarez-Pereira

Carlos Alvarez-Pereira

IBI Advisory Board Member -- Club of Rome Executive Committee Member; Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Science; Certified Warm Data Lab Host

Carlos Alvarez-Pereira is a senior professional combining more than 30 years of experience in entrepreneurship, research and innovation, business management and consulting, with a passion for complexity thinking and cultural transformation to cross the threshold towards equitable wellbeing within the biosphere. He is member of the Executive Committee of the Club of Rome and fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS). With an MA in Aerospace Engineering, he has been a lecturer and researcher in Applied Mathematics at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), and founder and top-level executive during more than 20 years in several IT consulting companies in Spain, Switzerland, France and Germany.
More...
He founded and was president until recently of the Innaxis Foundation, a non-profit research institution specialized in complex systems and big data. He continues promoting research beyond disciplines on our blind spots and what they reveal about our capacities for mutual learning. Reframing the role of science and technology to address societal challenges is one of his areas of interest.
Jeff Bloom

Jeff Bloom

IBI Advisory Board Member & Education Coordinator -- Professor Emeritus of Science Education, Curriculum Studies, and Complexity Sciences in Education – Northern Arizona University, USA - Certified Warm Data Lab Host

Jeff Bloom worked in marine ecology before entering into the field of education. He began teaching children in 1974 and earned his doctorate in 1987, at which point he began his career in teacher education. During the summer of 1975, he studied with Gregory Bateson during a 5-week live-in workshop on education. This experience with Gregory deeply affected his teaching, and research that began over a decade later.
More...
Jeff’s early research examined children’s contexts of meaning and later children’s discourse as complex phenomena. More recently, he has examined metapatterns as content, design, and research frameworks, as well as teaching, learning, and cognition as complex systems. Jeff has published two books: Creating a Classroom Community of Young Scientists (2 editions) and The Really Useful Elementary Science Book, as well as numerous journal articles and chapters in books. He has worked at Queens University (Canada), Acadia University (Canada),  Morgan State University (Maryland, USA), and Northern Arizona University (Arizona, USA).  He was active on the editorial board of the top journal, Science Education, and reviewed for many other top-tier journals in education. He also was active in the American Educational Research Association, the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, and the Canadian Society for Studies in Education.

Although Jeff’s teaching focused on science education, curriculum theory, and qualitative research, he has taught courses on the complexity sciences in education. But, his passion over the last several years of his career was his freshman seminar, “Ecology of Mind.” This course enacted much of his interest in transcontextuality and Batesonian ideas of systems thinking and epistemology.

Presently, Jeff is focusing his research on complexity in transcontextual learning, symmathesy and epistemology, and research and warm data.

Professional Membership (past and present): American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Association for Research in Education (AERA), including the Special Interest Groups: Chaos and Complexity in Education & Subject Matter Knowledge and Conceptual Change, Canadian Society for Studies in Education (CSSE), National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), Summit On Science (SOS), Complexity Sciences in Educational Research (CSER), National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE), Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE), and National Science Teachers Association (NSTA).

Website: https://www.jeffbloom.net

Blog: https://blog.jeffbloom.net

Serena Dinelli

Serena Dinelli

Advisory Board Member -- Psychologist, artist, Cirolo Bateson, Rome, Italy

I approached Bateson’s thought and systemics in the 70’s and I never lost my passion for them. For forty years, I have worked as a therapist and to this, since the 1980s, I have combined an interest in communication technologies, from television to IT, in their psycho-social, relational and aesthetic aspects. I am a member of the Circolo Bateson of Rome secretariat, of the AIEMS Board (Italian Association for Systemic Epistemology and Methodology) and of the Editorial Staff of the AIEMS online magazines Riflessioni Sistemiche and Ecologia della Salute. I also direct the series of short essays “Quaderni dell’AIEMS”. I enjoy writing, drawing, laughing, conversing, observing plants, animals, children and clouds, and reading in different fields, finding unexpected connections.

More ...
Serena has worked as a clinical psychologist for the National Health Service since 1980. Since then to 2008 she ran her work with families, children, adolescents and educators in several areas and at various levels. Along the years she had engaged in training classes of various kind and in grass roots initiatives. She has been active for many years in women’s rights movements. In 2006-2007 she was the supervisor of a group of migrant women run by an union in Rome, which also led to the DVD “Le marinaie: storie di vita e di libertà”. In her job she worked with clients from different countries (immigrants) and different social classes (from managers to poor families).

Since the nineties, having observed an important cultural change in her clients, she focused her attention on ICT and its psycho-social implications and researched and published as an independent scholar. In 1999 she published a study about the psycho-social and affective dimensions of television experience, in 2003 she directed a national research project on women and ICT (National Council for Economy and Labour).

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

IBI Advisory Board Member -- Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway

Eriksen is professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo. His fields of research include identity, nationalism, globalization and identity politics. He has done fieldwork in Trinidad and Mauritius. Eriksen finished his dr. polit.-degree in 1991, and was made professor in 1995, at the age of 33. In the years 1993-2001 he was editor of the journal Samtiden.

A considerable portion of Eriksen’s work has focused on popularizing social anthropology and conveying basic cultural relativism as well as criticism of Norwegian nationalism in the Norwegian public debate. He has written the basic textbook used in the introductory courses in social anthropology at most Scandinavian universities.

More...
The book, “Small Places — Large Issues” in English, is also used in introductory courses in many other countries, and has been widely translated, as has his other major textbook, “Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives”. Eriksen is a frequent contributor of newspaper pieces in Scandinavia.

Between 2004 and 2010, Eriksen directed an interdisciplinary research program on Cultural Complexity in the New Norway (CULCOM), at the University of Oslo. In a programmatic statement, he said that a main goal was to “redraw the map of Norway” to make it fit the new transnational, complex, and globalised realities. Some of the empirical results and theoretical perspectives resulting from this research project are summed up in the book “Samfunn” (“Society”, 2010).

In 2011, Eriksen was awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. Under the heading “OVERHEATING”, he now directs research on three major crises: globalization—economy/finance, environment/climate, and identity/culture. This project is both comparative and interdisciplinary.

Per Jensen

Per Jensen

IBI Advisory Board Member -- Professor of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice, Djakonhjemmet University College, Oslo, Norway

Per Jensen is professor at the Master Program in Family Therapy and Systemic Practice at Diakonhjemmet University College, Oslo, Norway. He has a doctorate in systemic psychotherapy from Tavistock Institute, East London University. He has written several textbooks and articles.

Website: http://www.diakonhjemmet.no/hogskole

Tim Keanini

Tim Keanini

IBI Advisory Board Member -- Specialist in IT systems, Chief Technology Officer, Lancope, USA

Tim brings nearly 25 years of network and security experience to the CTO role. He is responsible for leading Lancope’s evolution toward integrating security solutions with private and public cloud-based computing platforms. Tim is also responsible for developing the blueprint and solution that will help Lancope’s customers securely benefit from the promise of software-defined networking (SDN). Tim leads the evolution and positioning of Lancope’s technology architecture toward software-defined networking (SDN), along with other key product roadmap initiatives such as providing security in the private and public cloud.
More...
Prior to joining Lancope, Tim served as CTO for nCircle, driving product innovation that defined the vulnerability management and configuration compliance market. Before joining nCircle, he served as Vice President of Network Services for Morgan Stanley Online, where he built and secured a highly available online trading system. Previously, Keanini was a systems engineer at Cisco, advising top financial institutions on the design and architecture of their data-networking infrastructure.

Before joining nCircle, Tim served as Vice President of Network Services for Morgan Stanley Online, building and securing a highly available online trading system that had no reported outages or security incidents while in production. While at Morgan Stanley, he also planned, built and managed multiple data centers from the ground up. Previously, Tim was a systems engineer at Cisco, advising top financial institutions on the design and architecture of their data-networking infrastructure.

Tim is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), and has served as a leader in the development of various security standards including CVE, CPE, CCE and CVSS to name a few. Tim is also a highly visible security expert on social media, growing top tier press coverage for nCircle by 32 percent in 2012. He is frequently invited to speak at industry conferences held by organizations including RSA, SANS and BSides.

Howard Kornfeld

Howard Kornfeld

IBI Advisory Board Member -- Medical doctor specializing in pain, addiction, and emergency medicine, founder & director of Recovery Without Walls, California, USA

Dr. Howard Kornfeld is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Medicine and teaches at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine’s Pain Medical Fellowship Program. Dr. Kornfeld is a Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and is board certified in pain, addiction, and emergency medicine. Dr. Kornfeld is currently also the founding medical director at the Alameda County Medical Center, Pain Management and Functional Restoration Clinic, where he practices with the area’s most at-risk patients. Howard maintains a private medical practice in Mill Valley, California, and founded and directs Recovery Without Walls, which specializes in the treatment of chronic pain, chemical dependency, prescription medication management issues, and problems with alcohol.
More...
Dr. Kornfeld is a nationally recognized leader in the utilization of the opioid pain medication, buprenorphine (also known as Suboxone or Subutex). He is particularly skilled in the assessment and treatment of opiate and other chemical dependencies, chronic pain and problems with alcohol. He is widely known for his expertise in treating patients with complex benzodiazepine and sleeping pill difficulties (Valium, Xanax, Klonopin, Ambien, Lunesta and others). Dr. Kornfeld admits patients as member of the active staff at Marin General Hospital.

Website: http://recoverywithoutwalls.com 

Imelda McCarthy

Imelda McCarthy

IBI Advisory Board Member -- Family therapist, teacher, writer, Ireland.

Imelda McCarthy has been a family therapist, supervisor, writer and international presenter for over almost forty years, her writings have been translated into nine languages and cover the areas of sexualised abuse, poverty, inequality, gender and spirituality. She was a co-creator in the development of an orientation in systemic therapy and consultation, the ‘Fifth Province Approach’ with Nollaig Byrne and Philip Kearney. This orientation is largely shaped by the ideas of Gregory Bateson and the systemic practices of the Milan Associates. Imelda also spent over 25 years as an academic in the Social Sciences but chose to leave as the academy became more and more commercially and quantitatively directed.
More...
Currently, McCarthy works as a ‘free-lance’ systemic therapist, supervisor, teacher, and writer from her Dublin home under the rubric of The Fifth Province Centre and Institute. Here, she also facilitates meditation groups and spiritual practices. In addition, for the past number of years, she has been facilitating one and two-day retreats for those interested in meditation and the evolution of being. Throughout her practices with meditation she has integrated her systemic and spiritual experiences together with influences of her spiritual teacher, Sri Vasudeva.

Website: http://www.imeldamccarthy.com

Stephen Nachmanovitch

Stephen Nachmanovitch

IBI Advisory Board Member -- Improvisational musician, author, educator, Free Play Productions. USA.

Stephen Nachmanovitch is the author of two books on the creative process, Free Play and The Art of Is. He performs and teaches internationally as an improvisational violinist, and at the intersections of performing and multimedia arts, philosophy, and ecology. He graduated in 1971 from Harvard and in 1975 from the University of California, where he earned a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness for an exploration of William Blake. His mentor was the anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson. Nachmanovitch continues to write and teach about Bateson and extend Bateson’s ideas into the 21st century. He has taught and lectured widely in the United States and abroad on creativity and the spiritual, social, and ethical underpinnings of art. He has presented master classes in improvisation and workshops at many conservatories and universities, and has had numerous appearances on radio, television, and at music and theater festivals.

More...

He has taught and lectured widely in the United States and abroad on creativity and the spiritual underpinnings of art. In the 1970s he was a pioneer in free improvisation on violin, viola and electric violin. He has presented master classes and workshops at many conservatories and universities, and has had numerous appearances on radio, television, and at music and theater festivals. He has collaborated with other artists in media including music, dance, theater, and film, and has developed programs melding art, music, literature, and computer technology. He has published articles in a variety of fields since 1966, and has created computer software including The World Music Menu and Visual Music Tone Painter. He lives with his family in Charlottesville, Virginia.

More at www.freeplay.com

Katja Neves

Katja Neves

IBI Advisory Board Member; Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Katja Neves is an associate professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. With Gregory Bateson’s thinking as her foundational epistemological approach, Katja is passionate in her quest to understand the socio-ecological dynamics by which humans live within the planet’s more than human world. Katja’s earlier work studied the social, political, historical, and cultural ecologies of human relations with whales and dolphins in the Azores, Portugal, vis-à-vis contemporary marine biodiversity conservation.
More....
Still working within a Batesonian framework, Katja’s more recent research has focused on the reinvention of botanic gardens as centres of ecological education and practice. Generously financed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC Canada), this research has resulted in a single authored 2019 book with State University New York Press (SUNY) titled Postnormal Conservation: Botanic Gardens and the Reordering of Biodiversity Governance. She is currently writing a new book tentatively titled Ecologies and Aesthetics of Suburban Gardening in the Anthropocene.
Fred Steier

Fred Steier

IBI Advisory Board Member -- Professor in the Department of Communication, University of South Florida USA, Norway

Frederick’s research focuses on systemic approaches to the understanding of, and transformation of, social systems of diverse kinds, with special attention to issues of quality of life, and learning, communication and design. He has also focused on relational and participatory methodologies, including action research and use of World Café processes for collaborative learning. His publications include the edited volume, Gregory Bateson: Essays for an ecology of ideas (2005), in celebration of the Gregory Bateson centennial, and the edited volume Research and Reflexivity (1991).
More...
Dr. Steier received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Social Systems Sciences, in 1983.  In 1985, he had the honor of being named King Olav V Fellow, by the American-Scandinavian Foundation. This fellowship created an opportunity to do research and teach at the University of Oslo, and also allowed for the establishment of a long-term collaborative relationship with researchers at the Work Research Institutes, in Oslo. Prior to coming to the University of South Florida, Dr. Steier has held appointments in a variety of academic and research settings. These have included the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, where he served as a Research Director, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Oslo, and Old Dominion University (where he also served as Director of the Center for Cybernetic Studies in Complex Systems).

Dr. Steier has directed or been involved in participatory action research programs in a wide variety of settings, ranging from government institutions, including NASA, to family therapy based organizations, to science centers, such as the Museum of Science and Industry (Tampa), where he has led programs exploring the relationship between institutions of informal learning and communities. At the heart of many of these programs has been a concern with the co-generation of actionable knowledge, questions of reflexivity, the balance between identity and transformation, and the ways in which new media alter the soundscape and landscape of informal public life.

Lance Strate

Lance Strate

Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University, New York, New York, President of the Institute of General Semantics

Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City, a Trustee and President of the Institute of General Semantics, a Past President of the New York Society for General Semantics, the New York State Communication, Association and the Media Ecology Association, and the co-chair of the Global Listening Centre’s Academic Board. He held the 2015 Harron Family Chair in Communication at Villanova University, and received an honorary appointment as Chair Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Henan University in Kaifeng, China, in 2016. He is the author of Echoes and Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study (2006), On the Binding Biases of Time and Other Essays on General Semantics and Media Ecology (2011), Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman’s Brave New World Revisited (2014), Thunder at Darwin Station (2015), 麦克卢汉与媒介生态学 [McLuhan and Media Ecology, an original collection of essays published in Mandarin translation, 2016], Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition (2017), Introdução à Ecologia das Midías [Introduction to Media Ecology, co-authored by Adriana Braga and Paul Levinson, original contributions published in Portuguese translation, 2019), Diatribal Writes of Passage in a World of Wintertextuality: Poems on Language, Media, and Life (2020), and Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyric Excursions in the Human Life World (2022). He is co-editor of two editions of Communication and Cyberspace: Social Interaction in an Electronic Environment (1996, 2003), Critical Studies in Media Commercialism (2000), The Legacy of McLuhan (2005), Korzybski and… (2012), The Medium is the Muse: Channeling Marshall McLuhan (2015), La Comprensión de los Medios en la Era Digital: Un Nuevo Análisis de la Obra de Marshall McLuhan (2016), and Taking Up McLuhan’s Cause: Perspectives on Media and Formal Causality (2017). He has served as editor of the Speech Communication Annual, General Semantics Bulletin, and Explorations in Media Ecology, a journal he founded and edited for 9 years (2002-2007, 2017-2019). He delivered the 2018 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, received the Media Ecology Association’s 2018 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book and their 2013 Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship, the Eastern Communication Association’s 2019 Distinguished Research Fellow Award, the New York State Communication Association’s 2019 Neil Postman Mentor Award and their 1998 John F. Wilson Fellow Award for exceptional scholarship, leadership, and dedication to the field of communication, the Global Listening Centre’s 2020 Outstanding Research Award, and the 2022 J. Talbot Winchell Award for Service from the Institute of General Semantics. Translations of his writing have appeared in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Hungarian, Hebrew, Mandarin, and Quenya.

More...
He is the author of several scholarly works, including Echoes and Reflections:  On Media Ecology as a Field of Study (2006); On the Binding Biases of Time and Other Essays on General Semantics and Media Ecology (2011); Amazing Ourselves to Death:  Neil Postman’s Brave New World Revisited (2014); an original collection of essays published in Mandarin translation under the title, McLuhan and Media Ecology (2016); and Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition (2017). He is also a published poet, and author of the poetry collection, Thunder at Darwin Station (2015).

Lance Strate has co-edited a number of anthologies, including two editions of Communication and Cyberspace:  Social Interaction in an Electronic Environment (1996, 2003); The Legacy of McLuhan (2005); Korzybski and… (2012); The Medium is the Muse: Channeling Marshall McLuhan (2015), and Taking Up McLuhan’s Cause: Perspectives on Media and Formal Causality (2017).

He is the recipient of the Media Ecology Association’s 2013 Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship, and their 2018 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book, for Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition. In 1998, he received the New York State Communication Association’s John F. Wilson Fellow Award in recognition for exceptional scholarship, leadership, and dedication to the field of communication. Translations of his writing have appeared in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Hungarian, Hebrew, Mandarin, and Quenya.

Phoebe Tickell

Phoebe Tickell

IBI Advisory Board Member – Complex systems thinker – Facilitator and advisor – Certified Warm Data Lab Host

Phoebe is a complex systems thinker developing new routes and approaches to perceiving and acting in complexity. An ex-microbiologist and 10+ years systems thinker, she works across multiple societal contexts applying a complexity and systems thinking lens and has worked in organisational design, advised government, the education sector and the food and farming sector. Most recently, she works in the field of philanthropy and funding. She is working with The National Lottery Community Fund to implement systems-thinking approaches to funding and reporting models and leading insight and learning at the Digital Fund.
More...
Phoebe is often hired to seed, catalyse and build new networks and communities of sensemaking and intelligence, utilising her skills in digital organising, facilitation, complex pattern matching and highly networked and trans-contextual sense-making. She has also worked in designing online and offline learning programmes, bespoke governance systems and organisations.

She was certified as a Warm Data Lab host in 2019 and works closely with Nora and the IBI team to bring the warm data work to the world and create new ways of shifting perception of interdependency. All of the above would be impossible without the help of art, creativity and playfulness to bring it alive. “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” And the future is weirder than we think.

Roxana Vatanparast

Roxana Vatanparast

IBI Advisory Board Member -- Researcher, Writer, Attorney, Doctoral Candidate in Law, University of Turin, Italy

Roxana Vatanparast is a researcher, writer, and consultant.  She is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Law & Institutions at the University of Turin’s Faculty of Law, a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School, and a Research Associate at the International University College of Turin.  Her doctoral research is on the shifting conceptual paradigms surrounding property, sovereignty, and territoriality in international law in the digital age, specifically focusing on novel spatial and jurisdictional issues relating to big data using an interdisciplinary theoretical framework.  Previously, she was a Visiting Researcher at Sciences Po Law School in Paris.
More...
An attorney admitted to the bar in California, she has experience practicing in the private and non-profit sectors.  She currently serves as an Organizer for the Finance, Law and Economics Working Group of the Young Scholars Initiative, supported by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).  She also previously served as Co-President of the Board of Directors of the Iranian American Bar Association’s Northern California Chapter.

Her research interests include international law, global governance, political economy, systems thinking, big data, and algorithmic governance.

Education:

  • D. Candidate, Law & Institutions, University of Turin
  • M., Comparative Law, Economics and Finance, International University College of Turin
  • D., International Law, UC Hastings
  • A., Political Science & Philosophy, UC San Diego

Publications:

  • Book Review, Fritjof Capra & Ugo Mattei, The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community, 8(2) Journal of Human Rights & the Environment 305–310 (September 2017).
  • Waging Peace: Ambiguities, Contradictions, and Problems of a Jus Post Bellum Legal Framework, in Jus Post Bellum 142–160 (Carsten Stahn, Jennifer Easterday, & Jens Iverson eds., Oxford University Press, 2014).
  • Note, International Law Versus the Preemptive Use of Force: Racing to Confront the Specter of a Nuclear Iran, 31 Hastings International & Comparative Law Review 783–806 (Spring 2008).

Twitter

LinkedIn

Academia.edu

Rex Weyler

Rex Weyler

IBI Advisory Board Member -- Co-founder of Greenpeace International, writer, journalist, and ecologist, Canada

Rex Weyler is a writer and ecologist. His books include Blood of the Land, a history of indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; Greenpeace: The Inside Story, a finalist for the BC Book Award and the Shaughnessy-Cohen Award for Political Writing; The Story of Harmony, a history of musical tuning theory and technology; and The Jesus Sayings, a deconstruction of first century history, a finalist for the BC Book Award.

Weyler is a cofounder of Greenpeace International, Between 1974 and 1982, he served as a director of Greenpeace, editor of the Greenpeace Chronicles magazine, and was a co-founder of Greenpeace International.

More...
He sailed on the first Greenpeace whale campaign, and his photographs and news accounts of Greenpeace appeared worldwide. He served on campaigns to preserve rivers and forests, and to stop whaling, sealing, and toxic dumping.

Weyler co-founded Hollyhock Educational Centre on Cortes Island in British Columbia – dedicated to environmental, personal, and professional studies – and which remains Canada’s leading educational retreat centre. He co-developed the Justonic tuning software used by innovative musicians around the world and wrote The Story of Harmony about the history of musical tuning theory. His account of the first decade of Greenpeace is available in September 2004 from Raincoast Books in the Canada and Rodale Press in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

He remains active in environmental work. He writes for magazines and newspapers, is widely reprinted on the Internet, and appears weekly on Canada’s Omni-10 News show, The Standard.

Website: http://rexweyler.com

IBI Associates

Ann Badillo

IBI Associate — Futurist & Stategiest

Ann Badillo is an emissary from the International Bateson Institute and is a certified Warm Data Lab Host. As a systems practitioner, Ann works at the intersection of movements, narratives, ecosystems, metacurrency, and transcontextual learning in order to build toward systemic transformation in the 21st Century. Ann is a recognized futurist and strategist in Silicon Valley. Her professional life demonstrates a history of incubating and accelerating start-up ventures and innovation ecosystems around the world. For the past two decades, Ann’s focus has been on designing large-scale processes and experiences to tap collective intelligence and sense-making in order to assemble complexity and accelerate innovation across organizations. She is the principal author of Narrative Generation, Why Narrative will be your most valuable asset in the next 5 years. 21st Century Narrative Press.

More...

Ann lives in Palo Alto, California with her husband, Stephen and is part of the Stanford community. They have two adult children finding their way in the world. Ann earned her degree in Earth Sciences at the University of California, Davis. She attended Mercy High School and St. Emydius Grammar School of the San Francisco Archdiocese.
Louise Lowings

Louise Lowings

IBI Associate -- Head Teacher at the Madeley Preschool, England

Louise Lowings is the head teacher at Madeley Nursery School in Telford in the West Midlands of the UK. Her pedagogical approach is based on contextual relationships between children, their ideas and their encounters with the world. Together with the whole school community she has developed a place where educators and children are researchers. In 2000 she came across the work of the preschools in Reggio Emilia and continues to be inspired and delighted by their work. This led to encounters with other ideas and entangled influences. The most important of which were the ideas of Gregory Bateson, initially through dialogue and professional exchange with pedagogues in Stockholm and more recently through the IBI. This line of professional enquiry has transformed her understanding of the place of learning, of children, of educators and of schools.
More...
Louise regularly works with international partners across Europe and Asia in schools, kindergartens and academic institutions. She believes that that the gulf that often exists between the daily life of a school and academia is both artificial and damaging, leaving both exposed and vulnerable to charges of irrelevance. Her current research is on developing understandings and methodologies related to assessment and evaluation in transdisciplinary classrooms, where the delicacies and nuances of transcontextual learning are elaborated and valued, revealing the delightful complexity of life and education.

With increasing interest being shown in the pedagogical approach of Madeley Nursery School under the current leadership team, Louise regularly contributes to publications about early education and is regularly called upon to work with others in developing practice. As a member of the UK reference organisation for Reggio Emilia’s preschools, Louise contributes towards CPD work that is run by Sightlines Initiative Ltd, a not-for-profit company committed to empowering children to learn through enquiry, expression, imagination and curiosity.

Advisors

Branden Barber

Branden Barber

Advisor to the IBI

Branden Barber is a lifelong environmentalist with a degree in Environmental Studies from UCSC, who started with Greenpeace International on the Rainbow Warrior and then ran the Victorian State Office for Greenpeace Australia in Melbourne. Over the last 25 years he’s worked in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors, from start-ups to S&P 500 companies and NGO’s, large and small, with special focuses on brand strategy, user experience and graphic design, engagement and fundraising. Most recently Branden has been involved with various environmental organizations as staff or as consultant, was on the Leadership Teams at both Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch, and is currently the CEO of Rainforest Rescue. He is ardently committed to the “voiceless” natural world, believes in the power of complexity – thank you biodiversity – and brings a wealth and breadth of experience to the IBI.

Some of Our Friends

Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown

Former Governor of California

Fritjof Capra

Fritjof Capra

American-Austrian Physicist

Mary Catherine Bateson

Mary Catherine Bateson

Anthropologist

Terrence Deacon

Terrence Deacon

Biological Anthropologist

Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand

Founder, The WELL, GBN, The Long Now Foundation

Let’s Stay Connected

Ready To Continue the Conversation?