The UK Systems Society International Conference 2023

Systems: Transition to a
sustainable World

St Hilda’s College, Oxford, UK

14-15 September 2023

Registration guidelines

The registration fee for the two-day event is £250 including lunch, one evening meal and refreshments. Students/retirees £125. Further donations to the work of the society are gratefully acknowledged.

To book a place please visit this link.

Call for contributions

Papers are invited to contribute to the following streams

• Sustainability research- what can systems offer?
• Barriers to change – how can systems thinking/practice help overcome them?
• Methodologies -evaluating system methods for intervention and transition
• Cross disciplinary research -the contribution of Systems to interdisciplinarity
• Knowledge Transfer-continuity or transformation?
• Power and Accountability- Systems perspectives
• The question of scale and transition – spatial and chronological
• Policy making and its impact upon the process of transition
• Food Systems and their impact upon Healthy diets
• The NHS -A system to…?
• Sustainable Systems in Business

 Details of participation and submissions

• Abstracts: from the 31st of March 2023.
• Close for abstracts/submissions: 30th June
• Review of submissions by 30th July
• Revised submissions/full papers 31st of August.
• Conference publication of accepted abstracts 15th September.
• Publication of proceedings - January 2024

To submit please see here. 

Presentations will F2F and in plenary. Special dispensation for Zoom-based presentations might be considered in special cases but please note the cost of registration remains the same.

For full details of the conference keynote speakers, submission process, registration and accommodation in Oxford please see the conference flyer.

PS Please pass the flyer on to anyone you think might benefit from this conference – thank you and see you in September 2023.

(I am looking to attend, if not submit.)

Call for Papers (ii) Community Development and Preventative Care With Older People: New Values and Approaches

 I drafted this with (i) but didn't want to distract from the call and journal itself.

 With three working titles in a 250 word abstract in response to:

"How can prevention in social care be better conceptualised?" - 

I am open here (as ever) to expressions of interest towards collaboration. Support (help) would be invaluable, whether advice/co-author - to develop ideas on Hodges' model as a mathematical object(?). Even if this includes telling me to stop the barking and leave the tree alone. That point aside, the reading and videos are a challenge, but really enjoyable too.

In reading the call, Quaternary prevention will be added to:

"While applied in the context of complex social problems, discourses of prevention are most coherent and established in the realm of public health (e.g., tertiary, secondary, and primary prevention). As Rapoport highlighted in the 1960s, however, translating the unified view of prevention associated with public health into social welfare is inherently problematic. This remains the case. Preventative social care and support necessarily operate in complex and dynamic systems, generally where knowledge of causation and the consequences are unclear, and an imaginative application of care needs and contexts is required."

The result will be abstract. With “'re-imagine' social care" taken literally. 

Since there are quinary industries ( 'ours' no less), is there, should there be - quinary prevention? I think so, and this - and several legacy issues encountered in my career and ongoing today (also accentuated in the future?) will form the basis of discussion. Early days, but also need to decide upon the manuscript type:

• Article: a paper containing original research results that has not been published elsewhere. Articles shall have a maximum length of 6,000 words (the word count limit includes title, abstract, tables, figures, and references list). During a potential revisions stage, after peer-review, authors can extend the article length to a maximum of 8,000 words to better address the reviewers and editors’ comments.
• Commentary: an opinion piece providing a critical evaluation of a published article or topic of interest to the readership of the journal. Letters to the Editor and replies should be submitted as Commentaries. Commentaries shall have a maximum length of 2,000 words (the word count limit includes title, abstract, tables, figures, and references list).
• Review: a paper which comprehensively sums up the current state of research on a particular topic. Reviews shall have a maximum length of 6,000 words (the word count limit includes title, abstract, tables, figures, and references list). During a potential revisions stage, after peer-review, authors can extend the article length to a maximum of 8,000 words to better address the reviewers and editors’ comments.

The completed draft may not be 'finished' by July, but the exercise will help develop ideas to further understanding and awareness of Hodges' model. I'm almost too close to Hodges' model and I can't discuss ideas on a daily - work basis. The other impediment, is standing on my foot, pressing me against the walls (whichever domain) is the fact that models of/for care, and nursing theory have little currency these days. Finally, having explained I have no funding, encouragement to write is appreciated. This effort is also informed by threads on (and off) the Spirit of 1848 ListServe.

Call for Papers (i) Community Development and Preventative Care With Older People: New Values and Approaches

Editors: Fiona Verity, Frances Barker, Mark Llewellyn, Simon Read, and Jonathan Richards

Deadline for Abstracts: 15 March 2023
Deadline for Articles: 31 July 2023
Publication of the Issue: January/March 2024

Social Inclusion, peer-reviewed journal indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science; Impact Factor: 1.543) and Scopus (CiteScore: 2.5), welcomes new and exciting research papers for its upcoming issue "Community Development and Preventative Care With Older People: New Values and Approaches," edited by Fiona Verity (Swansea University), Frances Barker (Solva Care), Mark Llewellyn (University of South Wales), Simon Read (Swansea University), and Jonathan Richards (University of South Wales).

The subject of this thematic issue is a prevention agenda in social care for older people, with a focus on community development values and approaches. Though current policy direction across many countries suggests opportunities for re-imagining how prevention may be best conceptualised, numerous studies have highlighted that there remains considerable confusion and disparity in how this plays out in practice. 

Prevention in social care can be implemented from mixed starting points, i.e., economic objectives, social justice objectives, and look different in practice. Included within this broad agenda are community development approaches and service delivery models driven by the needs of older people in their communities/localities, and collectively focused on common concerns and solutions.

This thematic issue will canvass questions such as:

• What can be learnt from social care preventative practices with older people that use community development approaches?
• How might older people be part of a reimagination of a preventative agenda in social care?
• What can social enterprises and cooperatives contribute to advancing a prevention agenda in social care?
• What might the marketisation of service delivery systems (e.g., individualised/direct payments) mean for community development solutions and approaches?
• How can prevention in social care be better conceptualised?
• What has been learnt from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on older populations to inform a prevention agenda in social care?

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are encouraged to read the full call for papers:
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/pages/view/nextissues#PreventativeCare

Abstracts welcome by 15 March 2023.

Kindest regards,
Mariana

Mariana Pires Social Inclusion Cogitatio Press 1070-129 Lisbon Portugal New issues (open access): Vol 11, No 1 (2023): Disability and Social Inclusion: Lessons From the Pandemic
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/issue/view/332 Vol 10, No 4 (2022): Networks and Contested Identities in the Refugee Journey
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/issue/view/331

My source:
EUROPEAN-SOCIOLOGIST list

Post ii: https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2023/02/h2cm-relational-ontology.html

"In all flat maps (and I am one)" - Donne

'Discordia concors' - 'Concordia discors' ... plus ... 'Site map'*

"Drawing both on the medieval Mappae mundi and the Ptolemaic tradition revived in the Renaissance, the recurrent cartographic motif in John Donne’s poetry well reflects the preoccupations of a revolutionary period in the history of Western cartography. Yet, for all its cosmic magnitude, Donne’s poems, both holy and secular, are turned, not so much towards an exploration of the world as towards an exploration of the Self as the ultimate object of reflection." [Abstract].

Ladan Niayesh, ““All flat maps, and I am one”: Cartographic References in the Poems of John Donne”, Études Épistémè [Online], 10 | 2006, Online since 01 October 2006, connection on 22 February 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/955; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/episteme.955

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"Let us take as a first example one of the last poems written by Donne, "Hymn to God my God, in my Sickness", composed either during one of the poet’s serious illnesses in 1623 or alternatively shortly before his death in 1631 ..."

"... Here the poet compares himself, as he lies on his sick-bed, or possibly his death bed, to a flat geographical map studied by his physicians who are compared to cartographers: "my physicians by their love are grown / Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie / Flat on this bed" (ll. 6-8), and later "In all flat maps (and I am one)" (ll. 14)."

The global Psycho-Social-Geo-Political legacies and future?

"Yet for all its symbolic Noachid and Christian background, Donne’s cartographic imagery has room for the latest scientific contributions. Newly discovered territories are directly named here: "is the Pacific Sea my home?" (l. 16), "Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar" (l. 18). And if this metaphorical map is a flat one — "In all flat maps (and I am one)" — it is solely for the sake of commodity, as this flat shape actually stands for an acknowledged and accepted spherical reality: "west and east / In all flat maps (...) are one" (ll. 13-14)."

*I found some irony in 'site map' being the final map on the journal's webpage.

Sources:
 

London July 2022 Foyles, Waterstones and other bookshops:
Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Hardback)

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571345915-super-infinite/

BBC Radio 4 Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell [Episode 3]

Previously on W2tQ: 'maps'

C/o Medha Cherabuddi & Intima: "Each quadrant houses its own diversity, ..."

... and these seem to converge in the middle beautifully." *

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© The Common Thread by Medha Cherabuddi. Acrylic
Poetry and much more invited ...

Image: © The Common Thread by Medha Cherabuddi. Acrylic.

"Each quadrant houses its own diversity, and these seem to converge in the middle beautifully. This piece honors women's myriad of roles in medicine and their common thread. The constant throughout my life is art, especially when I find meaning in it.

Medha Cherabuddi was born and brought up in San Jose, California, and moved to Hyderabad, India, with her family at 9. After growing up with the best of both worlds, she completed medical school in India and moved to Detroit, Michigan, during the peak of the pandemic to begin her Internal Medicine residency at Henry Ford Hospital."

My source: Intima

Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine
36 N Moore St. #4W
New York, NY 10013
USA

*Yes they do! No endorsement implied.

"163 Days"

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	163 Days - Hannah Hodgson
Poetry in [not in] motion

“Hannah Hodgson takes us to the paradoxical heart of poetry itself: to be held inside a pain both intensified and soothed by the sheer brilliant presence of the poet’s mind.” – Caroline Bird

Hannah Hodgon is an award-winning poet and a palliative care patient. In her compelling debut collection 163 Days, she uses a panoply of medical, legal, and personal vocabularies to explore what illness, death and dying does to a person as both patient and witness.  

163 Days is the length of Hannah’s longest period of hospitalisation to date. In this long poem, she probes various truths, personal and medical; truths which clash like a tray of dropped instruments in a silent operating theatre.

The speaker is a teenager on the cusp of adulthood. Doctors struggle to diagnose her complex conditions. Through daily, diary-like poems we see the children’s ward through Hannah’s eyes. It is decked out in primary colours. Volunteer clowns visit. At seventeen she is ‘too old’ to be here, ‘too young’ to move to the adult ward.

The mundanity of hospital life is marbled by a changing landscape of mood, hope and loss. Her symptoms are painful. She has numerous tests and procedures to keep her alive long enough to figure out what’s wrong. A gap yawns between the person she is, and the person in her medical notes.

In ‘Aftercare’, Hannah navigates the worlds of both nightclubs and hospice care as she embarks on a new version of her life as a disabled adult. 163 Days is an important collection, in which Hodgson’s true voice takes poetry into difficult places.

Listen to the BBC radio play adaptation of 163 Days on the New Creatives website here.

163 Days by Hannah Hodgson, Seren Books ISBN-13: 9781781726471
Publication Date: Monday, March 28, 2022

My source:
Hannah's book in Kirkby Lonsdale, The Book Lounge 17th February 2023.

ISTAS23: Technology and Analytics for Global Development

Technology and Analytics for Global Development

13th – 15th September 2023

Swansea University, Swansea, Wales

The IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS) is the flagship conference of the IEEE’s Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT). ISTAS is a multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary forum for engineers, policy makers, entrepreneurs, philosophers, researchers, social scientists, and technologists to collaborate, exchange experiences, and discuss the social implications of technology.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are global grand challenges that are inherently complex, multi-faceted and socially embedded (Corbett & Mellouli, 2017). The SDGs inevitably encounter tensions between their design and implementation, representing design-reality gaps (Pradhan et al., 2022; Heeks, 2020a; Dennehy et al., 2014). While optimism is relatively high about the role of technology and analytics in the context of global development (Smidt & Jokonya, 2022), significant learning remains about how best to use them as ‘platforms that mediate development’ (Heeks 2020b). Further, despite the efforts made by scholars to advance understanding about the role of technology and analytics for global development (e.g., Dwivedi et al., 2021; Khene & Masiero, 2022; Masiero & Arvidsson, 2021), a concerted effort within and between academic disciplines, policy-makers, practitioners, and the intended beneficiaries of the SDGs will help to discover and create better ways to achieve the SDGs.

ISTAS23 aims to bring together contributions from a variety of perspectives, disciplines, and communities for the advancement of knowledge regarding Technology and Analytics for Global Development. We invite participation from academics and practitioners who are engaged in current debates about the role and significance of technology and analytics, and who are interested in topics related to sustainability, ethics, equity, and social values for global development.

IEEE ISTAS 2023 is Technical Co-sponsored by IEEE Region 8, IEEE UK and Ireland Section, IEEE UK and Ireland SSIT Chapter and IEEE UK and Ireland Education Chapter.

ISTAS23 more details ...

My source: c/o Fabio Caraffini - Co-chair of Track 8 -

https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabio-caraffini/  and Twitter is https://twitter.com/facaraff

via www.jiscmail.ac.uk/AI-SGES, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk

c/o Joan Didion 1934-2021: "Let Me Tell You What I Mean"

"All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dyingfall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what's going on in the picture. Nota bone:

It tells you.

You don't tell it."

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"Let me show you what I mean by pictures in the mind. I began “Play It as It Lays” just as I have begun each of my novels, with no notion of “character” or “plot” or even “incident.” I had only two pictures in my mind, more about which later, and a technical intention, which was to write a novel so elliptical and fast that it would be over before you noticed it, a novel so fast that it would scarcely exist on the page at all. About the pictures: the first was of white space. Empty space."...

My source: BBC Radio 4

Let Me Tell You What I Mean: A New Collection of Essays by Joan Didion

---

Episode 4

Book cover: goodreads.com

Text source:
New York Times archive - Why I Write, By Joan Didion, Dec. 5, 1976.
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/12/05/archives/why-i-write-why-i-write.html

Previously on W2tQ: Book: "The Empty Space"

Mathemacy and Mathematical archaeology c/o Ole Skovsmose

(Ack. quoted at length and hopefully justified?)

"Mathemacy

The notion of “literacy” has been developed by Paulo
Freire to mean much more than just being able to read
and write. Literacy also includes competence in interpreting
social life. The notion of mathemacy can be developed
in a similar way to mean more that an ability to
calculate.

In order to do this, it is important to pay attention to
the notion of reflection. When a calculation, based on a
mathematical task, is carried out, it is possible to reflect
on the actual result. Such a reflection has mathematical
concepts and algorithms as its objects. A question guiding
such a mathematics-oriented reflection can be: Are the
calculations made correctly?

When setting up a mathematical model, in order to
solve a non-mathematical problem, we face many difficulties.
Thus, any modelling process presupposes that
certain simplifications are established. This means paying
attention to certain aspects of “reality” and neglecting
others. This is, for instance, what takes place when a
population model is used for the purpose of forecasting.
Reflections referring to a modelling process are of a different
kind than mathematics-oriented reflections. While
this kind of reflection has mathematics calculations as its
object, a model-oriented reflection has the relationship between
mathematics and an extra-mathematical reality as
its object. A question guiding a model-oriented reflection
can be: Is the output of the modelling process reliable?
Model-oriented reflections are carried out with an interest
in improving the model, i.e. with a technological interest.
Such reflections concern the validity of the model." p.199.

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reflection "Be the difference!" ... Said, one number to another - hopefully!

reflection

"Mathematical archaeology Social structuration, at macro or at micro level, often takes place with reference to mathematics. Such an interplay between knowledge and power is referred to by the thesis of the formatting power of mathematics. As mathematics is basically an “invisible” part of social structuration, we need strong analytical tools to capture the role of mathematics. This leads to the notion of mathematical archaeology." p.199.

"A reflection guided by such questions can be called a context-oriented reflection. “Context” is here understood as a political, social or cultural context." p.199.

Hodges' Health Career - Care Domains - Model

'health career' - 'life chances'

"lifeworld-oriented reflection"p.200.

Skovsmose, O. Linking mathematics education and democracy: Citizenship, mathematical archaeology, mathemacy and deliberative interaction. Zentralblatt füur Didaktik der Mathematik 30, 195–203 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-998-0010-6

 #HealthTheory

Tuskegee Healing, the Moral Determinants of Health, and the Ethics of Research on Black Health

My source: SpiritOf1848 list - Lachlan Forrow

Research Ethics Consortium: Tuskegee Healing, the Moral Determinants of Health, and the Ethics of Research on Black Health

February 17, 2023 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. ET | Live on Zoom | Register Here

The USPHS Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male at Tuskegee and Macon County began in 1932, after US Public Health Service doctors recorded a 39.8% prevalence of syphilis among patients seen in Macon County, Alabama during a treatment study in one corner of the county. While these data might have raised many possible research questions, USPHS doctors chose to focus on the natural history of untreated syphilis.

They not only denied participants the treatments available in the 1930’s; they also chose to continue to study untreated syphilis long after highly-effective, inexpensive, and extraordinarily safe treatment with penicillin became widely available. While the research methods they used are now universally condemned, far less attention has been given to more fundamental questions about the ethics of research, including:

What should the goals of research even be? Who should decide those? What are the most crucial ethical characteristics of relationships between investigators and research subjects?

Introductory Remarks:

• Carmen J. Thornton, MPH, MCHES
  Director of Research, Development, and Workforce, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
  Consultant, Voices for Our Fathers Legacy Foundation
  Granddaughter of Fred Tyson, subject in USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee

Presenters:

• Susan M. Reverby, PhD
  Marion Butler McLean Professor Emerita in the History of Ideas
  Professor Emerita of Women's and Gender Studies, Wellesley College
  Author of Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy
• Jesse Milan, Jr., JD
  President and CEO, AIDS United
• Wangui Muigai, PhD
  Assistant Professor, Brandeis University
  Greenwall Faculty Scholar, class of 2025

Moderator:

• Lachlan Forrow, MD
  Director, Ethics & Palliative Care Program, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
  Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine, Part-time, Harvard Medical School
  President, The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship

Commentator:

• David Augustin Hodge, Sr., DMin, PhD
  Associate Director of Education and Associate Professor, National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, Tuskegee University

Support provided by the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

This will build from two November 2022 events (see their flyers below) commemorating the 90th/50th/25th anniversaries of the USPHS Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male at Tuskegee and Macon County, the first organized/hosted by the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University, the second organized/hosted by CDC (see details and video of that here; the first 2min30sec include Dr. Termika Smith’s wonderful intro [60 seconds] and President Biden’s remarks [90 seconds]. 

I would also strongly recommend watching ~5 minutes starting at 11min45sec – Mrs. Lillie Head, daughter of Fred Tyson, one of the men in the Study, and founder/leader of Voices for Our Fathers Legacy Foundation, explaining what the Study was really about (i.e. the moral issues were racism, dehumanization, etc. etc., not just “failures of informed consent”). 

For our Feb 17 session, after presentations by Carmen J. Thornton (Lillie Head’s daughter, i.e. granddaughter of Fred Tyson) and Susan Reverby (arguably the leading historian of the Study), and then presentations about applying this framework to 3 concrete areas of severe and ongoing “Black health disparities” (Jesse Milan, President/CEO of AIDSUnited on HIV/AIDS; Wangui Muigai on the history and current realities of Black maternal/infant mortality; and I hope [not yet confirmed] Rev. Jeffrey Brown [co-chair of Embrace Boston] on gun violence) the “Commentators” will be Dr. David Hodge, Associate Director of the National Center, who organized their Nov 2022 event, and Dr. Termika Smith, who organized and moderated the CDC event. Then Carmen J. Thornton, as granddaughter, will have closing words -- what her grandfather might say, and what she herself thinks, about MLK’s question: Where Do We Go From Here? 

2023 Improving University Teaching - Hybrid Conference: Sustaining Academic Resilience

 I received news this morning that I will be presenting virtually at:

"Students may arrive at university without a clear sense of what to do now that their goal of admission has been attained. To them, reaching that goal feels like a significant achievement—and it is. But finding a purpose—their own purpose—for pursuing university studies beyond admission is clearly a key ingredient for their academic and personal success.  Without it, they risk not having the resilience needed to cope with novelty and failure. With faculty support, however, students can develop a personal sense of direction to both guide and inspire them as they learn. A corollary is that emotional investment in their studies will help determine their success just as much as intellectual gifts and academic preparation.

Two years ago, the IUT conference was organized around the theme of “the human side of teaching.” This year we return to some of these same issues, which have become if anything more important in the light of our experience during the pandemic. We have seen how students who engage in remote learning often miss the support of direct contact with peers and academic staff and must compensate with added commitment of their own. We have also seen how teachers and students can become stressed to the point that wellbeing becomes an urgent issue for both. How can their wellbeing be nurtured? How can we sustain academic resilience?"

More details ...

 
Looking forward to join, learn and share:

"Hodges' model: Insights into Sustainability & Resilience"

Automation by Design: Politics, Culture, and Landscape in an Age of Machines That Learn

The virtual one and a half-day symposium will be held Friday, February 17 & Saturday, February 18, 2023.

Registration closes February 15

 

More details ... 

 

My source: https://twitter.com/BabbageInst/status/1584913168886661120?s=20&t=RWwJKfY572yfCl3CukGSvg

 

 

Where is NURSING THEORY: integrated, holistic, and person-centered care ... ?

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"Be the difference!"	Nightingale
"Be the difference ... to All others."	What is 'different' here? Locally Nationally Internationally Biosphere

#HealthTheory

Previously on W2tQ: 'Nightingale'

My source/prompt: c/o @Jasonforrestftw
https://twitter.com/Jasonforrestftw/status/1621224549848170499?s=20&t=KHJSqwCsE6r3Ch8lRoDioQ