Next Generation Universities – Oguz Baburoglu, Ph.D
Oguz Baburoglu, Ph.D., is best known for bringing large numbers of citizens together to reinvent democracy using Future Search Conferences. First to bring this participatory constitution-making initiative as an intervention to Turkey, here he speaks about what is necessary for the successful realization of large-scale action research in polarized political contexts. Our conversation starts with learning about Oguz’ background at Wharton, U. Penn where he brought together systems thinking (with Russ Ackoff) and human centric organizational interventions (with Don Schoen) in the spirit of action research. His current focus is on design for the “University of the Future.” Read More
Oguz writes…Over the last 21 years we have been engaged in designing and developing three Universities from ground zero.These University action research initiatives have differed in a number of ways. We have actively served and implemented the co-generated design ideas in Sabanci University as a member of the University, prepared a turn-key design for Ozyegin University and continued in a monitoring role and we are working with the Abdullah Gul University supported with a research grant to generate a model that puts societal impact in front of research and education missions which can then be diffused to the other Universities in Turkey.
Our presentation therefore will bring new generation and alternative to mainstream universities design experiences and try to generate meaningful reflections about the process and content of action research within this context. See the slide deck here