Ms Louie Gardiner
Potent6 Founding Director
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Inside-out systems thinking! What can subjective empiricism bring to systems thinking and systemic intervention? This question sits at the heart of my doctoral research. Conventional approaches to systems research focus on what happens out there in the wider world and on the dynamics between people - the stuff we can observe. My curiosity - and the space where there is contribution to be made in the field - turns the lens of inquiry inwards as I engage relationally and practically in the wider world. I weave insights from diverse fields including systems thinking, complexity sciences, cybernetics and cognitive sciences. I have found myself simultaneously being the research, holding the research and being an instrument of it... so what is coming out of it? What does this mean for the onto-epistemological stance I take - and how do I defend it? What difference might any of this make to anyone else but me? Is it possible that what is coming through me might even make a difference to other PhD students in seemingly unrelated fields? Another way to look at what I am doing, is to consider what it means to BE a systems thinker IN PRACTICE? If you have been grappling with the ideas that abound in systems thinking and complexity spheres and find yourself not quite grasping what it means for you, to you and about you in your praxis, then we might have some really great conversations. I am less enthused by abstract, theory-bound floor-wrestling and very passionate about praxis playfulness. I am less interested in rational bit-by-byte knowledge exchange and wholly excited by experimenting with ways of living and living into systems/complexity principles..
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