Webinar : Transforming human activity systems: towards an agriculture for improving human-biosphere relations

Description Join the first ELLS SA SYSTEM Webinar : Transforming human activity systems: towards an agriculture for improving human-biosphere relations
During this webinar hosted by SLU Global and ELLS, Professor Emeritus Ray Ison will talk about how we can transform human activity systems towards a more improved human-biosphere agriculture.
📍 Online webinar | 🗓 17 March, 2026 (10.00 to 11.30 am (CET)).

Participation is free of charge but you need to register with the link below.
https://www.slu.se/en/calendar/2026/03/ray-ison/

  • Webinar abstract
Research is a practice that can be systematic, systemic or both. Systematic practice is essentially linear and associated with simple cause and effect. In contrast systemic practice is relational and encompasses feedback dynamics; it is thus circular, recursive and adapted to context. These two concepts (systemic/systematic) can be understood as a self-negating, either/or, pair (a dualism) or as modes of praxis that can form a unity, a whole, by epistemologically responsible practitioners (i.e., a duality). Claims for research practice are that it can provide new understandings and (situated?) improvements, though all too often this is expressed as the production of ‘new knowledge’ in a simplistic manifestation of the linear model of knowledge production, rather than embodied enactment of knowing. Drawing on his own agricultural education, his research and ‘teaching’ practice and his turn to Systems scholarship: social learning; systemic co-inquiry; systemic governance and the design of learning systems, Ray will explore the constraints to effective situational improvement that have come through the institutionalisation of the linear model of knowledge production, scholarship which began with the publication of:
Russell, D.B., Ison, R.L., Gamble, D.R. & Williams, R.K. (1989) A Critical Review of Rural Extension Theory and Practice. Australian Wool Corporation/ University of Western Sydney (Hawkesbury). 67pp.
He will finish with some personal reflections on a 55 year ‘career’ within (or near) the domain of agriculture (understood as one of the main domains in which human-biosphere relations are manifest through the enactment of ‘human activity systems’ that can be the product of systemic (co)design).
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Start of the eventStart of the eventStart of the event 17.03.2026 - 10:00
End of the event 17.03.2026 - 11:30
Meeting place Video conferencing
URL link for video conferencing
 https://www.slu.se/en/calendar/2026/03/ray-ison/
Country Pays-Bas