Systems Practice: How to Act

?Ray Ison, Professor of Systems at The Open University (OU) in the UK since 1994, is a member of the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice (ASTiP) Group in the STEM Faculty. With colleagues, he has made pioneering contributions to Systems education (a field he chooses to call ‘cybersystemics’), at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He has an established international reputation as a researcher, teacher, author and consultant, has led major change management projects, and held (or holds) significant international leadership positions in the cybersystemics field (e.g. President of ISSS 2014-15). His research and scholarship is focused on the presence or absence of systemic relations between the social and ecological, or what he terms ‘systemic governance’. In 2008, he established the Systemic Governance Research Program within the Sustainability Institute at Monash University, Australia which he led till 2015.  Prior to joining the OU he worked in Australia at the Universities of Sydney and Western Sydney (Hawkesbury). Professor Ray Ison is regular keynote speaker at national and international conferences and is frequently invited to run workshops. As well as publishing numerous journal papers, he has edited or co-edited nine journal special editions and co-authored or co-edited four books including: Cow up a Tree. Knowledge and Learning for Change in Agriculture: Case studies from industrial countries (2000); Agricultural Extension and Rural Development: Breaking out of Knowledge Transfer Traditions (2007) and Agronomy of Grassland Systems (1997).