2021 is the jubilee year of Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) at The Open University (OU).

Professor Mike Jackson from Hull will present a webinar for our third event scheduled for 22^nd June at 12 noon (UK time).  Mike’s talk will be on Critical Systems Thinking and Practice: What has been done and what needs doing.  Mike will be introduced by Dr Magnus Ramage from the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice (ASTiP) group at the OU. An outline of Mike’s presentation is given below.

You are invited to join us on Zoom. To receive the live links for the talk, register your intent to attend on Eventbrite.

There are a limited number of spaces available on Zoom. Overflow attendees will watch Mike on YouTube or Facebook Live. We hope you will join us online for the talk, and/or on social media for the conversation using #OUSTiP and #OUSTiP50.

Mike Jackson presentation outline: Mike is known as a key figure in the development of ‘critical systems thinking’ - a topic on which he has published ten books and over 150 articles. His latest book ‘Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity’ was published by Wiley in April 2019. In 1979 the four UK universities that had groups or departments teaching ‘systems’ – Aston, City, Lancaster, and the Open University – established the UK Systems Society (UKSS). Mike Jackson was part of Lancaster University at that time and later did his PhD at Hull University.  Mike comments: “As my contribution to celebrating 50 years of systems thinking at the Open University, I would like to discuss the research programme in critical systems thinking and practice that developed at Hull in the early 1980s and has continued for 40 years. I will seek to assess what has been achieved and what still needs to be done. I will try to relate the work at Hull to what has happened in systems thinking elsewhere in the UK, particularly at the Open University”.

The next two events are being scheduled for 22^nd June (with Professor Mike Jackson from Hull University) and 27^th July (with Dr Sharon Pollard from South Africa). Details of registration will be available shortly including on

2021 is the jubilee year of Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) at The Open University (OU).

We welcome Dr Glenda Eoyang from Minnesota - Founding Director of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute -  at this second event to deliver a presentation on “Scale-free dissemination: local behaviours to systemic results". The  recording of this 25^th May event involving Guest speaker Glenda Eoyang can be found on YouTube and Facebook.  Events are also advertised on the OU STEM Faculty page on Eventbrite.

2021 is the jubilee year of Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) at The Open University (OU).

In the wake of the pandemic, confronted by human-induced climate change and exposure to wide-ranging vulnerabilities within our societies, many commentators call for investment in thinking and acting differently, particularly with Systems Thinking