The Systemic Inquiry ‘Governing the Anthropocene. Cybersystemic Possibilities?’ was held at Herrenhausen Palace, Hanover from 30-31st July 2015.

Stefan Blachfellner (BCSSS Managing Director and IFSR Vice President), David Rousseau (BCSSS Scientific Council Member), Felix Tretter (BCSS Fellow), Thomas Wallner (BCSSS Board Member),  and Liss C. Werner (BCSSS Research Group Leader) have been identified and invited as thought leaders in the field to attend and contribute to the Systemic Inquiry sponsored by the Volkswagen foundation.

For detailed information about the Inquiry, its´s framing, process, and outcomes, please visit the Blog of the Systemic Inquiry, which will be updated regularly.

Herrenhausen PalaceSystemic Inquiry

Our BCSSS PhD scholar Asminia Koukou and BCSSS guest students Lin Bi from China, Markus Arzberger from Austria, and Annette Grathoff from Germany have been selected to attend the PhD summer school sponsored by the Volkswagen foundation and conducted by WINS, the Berlin Workshop in Institutional Analysis of Social-Ecolgical Systems in cooperation with the Humboldt University and the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) and it´s 2015 president, Prof. Ray Ison.

Working strategically to negotiate boundaries for research in a meaningful way in the areas of contemporary concern e.g. sustainability; development; health; farming, food, rural areas and environment/biodiversity, to name but a few, requires particular skills and abilities: It is necessary to be able to make relevant connections and to contextualize research activities without becoming overwhelmed by potential complexity and uncertainty. The context of the increasingly multifaceted complexity of issues of sustainability and climate change in relation to most contemporary issues is particularly challenging for PhD research.
The purpose of this course was to help the PhD students, develop their skills in contextualizing your research, to make connections among issues using systems, cybernetic and complexity thinking and to so improve their ability to work both strategically and purposefully. The course was also designed to help them build on what other researchers have done.