Who we are

Systems Beings Lab (SBL) is a collaborative research collective to facilitate and elevate various approaches to grapple with complexity. We bring process-oriented approaches to foster non-linear dynamics of un/learning, and allow space and time to explore the messes of paradoxes, contradictions, and multiples perspectives. 

The SBL acknowledges that the ability of a society to understand and respond to complexity requires knowledge and awareness of systems and our interconnected relationship to them. As learning and adaptive beings, we are part of these systems and we shape them as much as they shape us.

Systems beings invoke deeper epistemic and ontological questions around the nature of the world, including our knowledge of and interactive relationship to the world. Responding to emergent literacy practices, we – as systems beings – enact multiple ways of knowing and learning (epistemologies) coupled with how we experience and co-construct the nature of reality as beings (ontologies). Beings mirror the actions of organisms in a dynamic system, adapting to constant change through actions that support systems for generative growth.

What we do

The SBL co-creates and fosters systems approaches to complexity, responding to research areas, such as living ecologies, AI, research design, integrative sciences, and educational systems, both within and beyond the university. 

Flowing from various expertise and experience, from ecology, education, chemical engineering, poetry, geography, and futurism, we are fortunate to develop transdisciplinary spaces to explore complexity from cognitive, relational, and affective perspectives. We ultimately explore integrated and holistic way of experiencing, living, sensing, and showing up in the world.

The SBL collaborates with international partners, conducts research, engages with external stakeholders, and hosts events (workshops, speakers, symposia, etc.). Most of all, we foster co-creative spaces to explore possibilities and opportunities within and beyond academia.