Trans4m’s New PhD Cohort: Highly international group meets for Induction at Home for Humanity in France
5 October 2018: With Participants from Jordan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Namibia/Germany a new group of PhD students began their research-to-innovation journey, as part of the Trans4m Da Vinci PhD Program for Integral Development, dubbed “Care-4-Society”.
The work and innovation foci of the new participants in this integral PhD Program geared towards institutional and societal impact covered as diverse a range as finance, banking and entrepreneurship for community (Lanre Kazeem Abimbola and Bukola Olumoh from Nigeria / Patience Magodo and Isabely Nyoka from Zimbabwe), integral enterprise-and-academy development (Zeina Sahyoun, Jordan), feminist economics (Mayyada Abu-Jaber, Jordan), inclusive peacebuilding (Eck Volkmann, Namibia/Germany), and transformative education (Nazir Tunio from Pakistan). Almost everyone of the new PhDs is going to build on prior work done in their respective organisation, community and society. One of the participants is enrolled in the Trans4m PHD (Process for Holistic Development) program.
The 5-days induction took place in the Home for Humanity, serving as rural campus for Trans4m. During the week, all integral facets of Home for Humanity were activated – exposing participants intensely to the surrounding nature and community, to local and global art and culture, to the innovation academy and impact forum. That made the induction experience a highly integral one, laying thereby the experiential, imaginative, conceptual and practical foundations for the envisioned impact of the participants on their own community, enterprises and societies – and, of course, on themselves.
Participants received an in-depth overview on the Integral Worlds approach, and on the transformative trajectories designed to facilitate the co-creation of social innovation and societal impact, including an overview to the Integral Research-to-Innovation approach.
On one of the evenings of the induction, participants met with culturally, economically, politically and ecologically oriented transformatiopn agents of the surrounding Valromey region in the Espace Aguascalientes Art Gallery in Champagne – a cultural space facilitated by Serge Marie and Georges Leblé – for an intense intercultural dialogue on transformation and locally grounded change initiatives and projects.
On the final evening the group was joined by Rama Mani, Founder of the Theatre of Transformation Academy and Co-Convener of Home for Humanity who shared a potent brief performance – thereby also inviting participants in her own capacity to step into their future innovation-story.
That set the scene for the culmination of the induction week on the final day during which participants presented, and played out, their forthcoming research-to-innovation journey and envisioned impact on society.
Guided and catalysed by Trans4m’s co-founders Ronnie Lessem and Alexander Schieffer, the induction was supported by Trans4m Junior Fellow Christophe Haessler from Switzerland.
