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Joint National Conference
The Application of Complexity Science
to Human Affairs

Michael Young Building, Open University Campus,
Milton Keynes,
Tuesday 28th February 2006

Co-hosted by:
The Complexity Society, UK
and
The Open University Innovation, Knowledge and Development Research Centre.

Home | Speakers | Programme | Abstracts | Conference Fees

Conference Speakers include:

Dr Katrina Wyatt is a founder member of the Health Complexity Group and a research fellow in the Institute for Health and Social Care, Peninsula Medical School. Recent research projects include a prospective 2 year longitudinal study and an 18 month retrospective study to gain an understanding of the enablers and barriers to regeneration projects in West Cornwall. The Health Complexity Group are currently working on a series of research projects to gain an understanding of what the necessary conditions for transformational change in health and social care communities are. She also holds the grant for a research programme called ‘Folk.us’. This programme is funded by the Department of Health and is aimed at securing meaningful service user, patient and carer involvement in research and development.

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Dr Robin Durie gained MA and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh, UK. He was Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Staffordshire University, UK, for 10 years, before becoming a founder member of the Health Complexity Group in 2002. In 2005, he also joined the Department of Politics at Exeter University as a Lecturer.

His work in philosophy focused on the areas of time, change and difference, on which topics he has published a number of articles. He is a world-renowned expert on the philosophy of Henri Bergson, having edited and translated Bergson’s book on Einstein, Duration and Simultaneity. He is committed to interdisciplinary research, collaborating with theoretical physicists for the collection Time and the Instant, and with theoretical biologists for the forthcoming collection On Life: Essays in Philosophy and Biology. He inaugurated the first UK PhD programme in Fine Art, Design and Philosophy, at Staffordshire University, leading to the publication of the monograph Face to Face: Directions in Contemporary Women’s Portraiture, and he continues to collaborate with artists, designers and architects on ongoing research projects.

On the basis of his collaborations with physicists and biologists, Robin developed a research interest in the principles of complexity theory, leading to his work with the Health Complexity Group. He has worked on a series of research projects for the HCG, including a major evaluation of the National Health Service Modernisation Agency’s ‘Pursuing Perfection’ programme. He has also collaborated with colleagues on social regeneration research in Cornwall.

Books
Face to Face: Directions in Contemporary Women’s Portraiture
(London: Scarlet Press, 1998).
Henri Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity (Editor, Co-translator, and Introduction) (Manchester: Clinamen Press, 1999).
Time and the Instant (Editor and Introduction) (Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2001).
Towards an Immanent Dualism: The Philosophy of Bergson (forthcoming, 2006).
On Life: Essays in Philosophy and Biology (co-editor; forthcoming 2007).

Articles in Refereed Journals
‘Speaking of Time: Husserl and Levinas on the Saying of Time’, in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (1999), Vol. 30.
‘Splitting Time: Bergson’s Philosophical Legacy’, in Philosophy Today, (2000) Vol. 40.
‘Does Phenomenology have a Future?’, in Radical Philosophy (2002) No 113.
‘Immanence and Difference: Toward a Relational Ontology’, in The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2002), Vol. LX.
‘Creativity and Life’ Review of Metaphysics 56 (December, 2002).
‘The Mathematical Basis of Bergson’s Philosophy’, in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, special number on Bergson (January, 2004), Vol. 35.
‘Nature from the Perspective of Immanence’, in Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy (2004), Vol. 15.

Chapters in Edited Collections
‘Die Spur und der Rhythmus’, in Die Wiederentdeckung der Zeit, eds. A. Gimmler., M. Sandbothe & W. Zimmerli (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1997).
‘Indication and the Awakening of Subjectivity’, in Ethics and the Subject, ed. K. Simms (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997).
‘Problems in the Relation between Philosophy & Maths’, in Virtual Mathematics, ed. S. Duffy (Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2005).
‘Community Regeneration and Complexity’, in Complexity and Healthcare Organization, ed. D. Kernick (Oxford: Radcliff Medical Press, 2004).

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David Byrne is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy in the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University. He has worked as an academic and in community development. His books include: Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences - Routledge 1998; Social Exclusion - Second Edition Open University Press 2005; Interpreting Quantitative Data - Sage 2002; Understanding the Urban - Palgrave - 2001.

Paul Stevens is Vice President of information technology at GSK UK Pharmaceuticals. He assumed this role in January 2001 with the merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham.

Dr Stevens joined Glaxo as a research scientist in 1974 and worked in Microbial Biochemistry where he helped to develop early techniques of high-throughput screening of samples for potential new medicines. In 1986, Dr Stevens moved into the IT department of the commercial arm of Glaxo. Since that time he has been involved in many aspects of IT within Manufacturing, HR and Corporate at both a local and global level.

Dr Stevens holds a PhD in biochemistry from Brunel University, an MSc in Biochemistry from London University and a BSc in Pharmacology from Bradford University.

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Robert Geyer is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and Communications at the University of Liverpool, Co-Director of the Centre for Complexity Research (CCR) and a Director on the UK Complexity Society Management Council. As CCR Co-Director, he organised the 11-14 September 2005 Complexity, Science and Society Conference at the University of Liverpool (400 participants from 18 different disciplines) and maintains the CCR Complexity Network (640 members from 42 different countries). His forthcoming and recent books include: (co-edited with Jan Bogg) Complexity, Science and Society, Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing 2007. (co-authored with Helen Cooper and Geoff Gillian) Riding the Diabetes Rollercoaster: A Patient and Carers Guide, Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing 2007. (co-authored with Andrew MacIntosh) Integrating UK and European Social Policy: The Complexity of Europeanisation, Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing, 2005. Exploring European Social Policy. Oxford: Polity Press, 2000. (co-edited with Christine Ingebritsen and Jonathon Moses) Globalization, Europeanization, and the End of Scandinavian Social Democracy? London: Macmillan 2000.

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Damian Allen is the Director of Children’s Services for Knowsley Council. He led the Council’s successful bid for Beacon status in Transforming Secondary Education 2003/04 and the Council was also awarded Beacon status for Integrating Children’s Services in 2005. He was also responsible for devising and implementing the LEA’s successful Key Stage 4 raising attainment strategy, the ‘Plus One Challenge’ which has contributed to a 20% increase in GCSE results in the past 5 years.

Damian was a member of Knowsley LEA’s successful Education Leadership Team who were awarded Public Servants of the Year by the Public Finance magazine, in the category of ‘Education Team of the Year 2004’.

Knowsley Council is one of the ten LEAs nationally to be in the first wave of the DfES’ ‘Building Schools of the Future’ which will contribute up to £150m to rebuild and transform the borough’s secondary education system. This is a radical transformation which will see the replacement of the borough’s 11 current secondary schools with a local system comprising eight new state of the art Learning Centres. This approach was recently endorsed by the Government, which cited it as a case study in their Education White Paper: ‘Higher Standards, better Schools for All’.

Academically, Damian is interested in the application of complexity theory to local government change agendas, organisational development and ecology and in particular the notion of social embeddedness and collaboration as a means to building intellectual and social capital in society.

Prior to becoming a Local Authority Officer, he was an Assistant Principal in a Sixth Form College and before that a secondary school science teacher.

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Eve Mitleton-Kelly is founder and Director of the Complexity Research Programme at the London School of Economics; visiting Professor at the Open University; Coordinator of Links with Business, Industry and Government of the European Complex Systems Network of Excellence, Exystence; Executive Co-ordinator of SOL-UK (London) (Society for Organisational Learning); Member of the ONCE-CS European network; and Advisor to European and USA organisations. EMK’s recent work has concentrated on the implications of the theories of complexity for organisations and specifically on strategy, IT legacy systems, organisational learning, the emergence of new organisational forms, the ‘design’ of organisations, post merger integration, and the development of enabling environments. She has developed a theory of complex social systems and an integrated methodology using both qualitative and quantitative tools and methods. Her first career between 1967-83, was with the British Civil Service in the Department of Trade and Industry, where she was involved in the formulation of policy and the negotiation of EU Directives.

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Dr Elizabeth McMillan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Open University. A member of IKD, a co-founder and a Director of the Open University Complexity Science Research Centre and a co-founder and a Director of the newly created UK Complexity Society.

Her book Complexity, Organizations and Change (ISBN. 0-415-31447-X) published in 2004 is due out in paperback in 2006. This is about transforming the way people think about organizations, about their design, the way they operate and, most importantly, the people who co-create them. Other publications are listed on her web site: http://dpp.open.ac.uk/profiles/mcmillan-e.htm

A speaker at conferences and seminars in Europe, Australia and the USA. She has spoken on local radio and was interviewed on the Today programme on her research.

Elizabeth also works as a consultant and advises businesses on how to introduce effective organisational change using the latest ideas from complexity science. As an experienced manager and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development she is readily able to combine theory with application.

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Dr Ysanne Carlisle’s research interests include: management of knowledge and innovation, strategy, ethics and complexity. A member of IKD she has published extensively and presented at conferences in the UK and Australia. As a member of the Open Business School she has taught widely on a range of business and management topics.

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Page last updated: 29 June, 2010