Chris High
Lecturer in Systems Thinking & Practice
Email: c.high@open.ac.uk
I have been Lecturer in Communications and Systems at the OU since August 2004.
I'm interested in understanding and facilitating learning and communication for sustainable development, particularly when applied to rural development. My interests also cover research methodology and social learning in the governance of the environment.
My publications include journal papers, book chapters, reports and conference papers in development studies, rural sociology and systems theory and practice.
Research
My research interests cover the governance of rural development, and the mediating role that technologies can play in social learning. I am currently engaged in work on social learning under multi-level governance and on participatory video. These two strands of work have come together in a collaboration with Gusztav Nemes of the Hungarian Academy of Social Sciences, and Rick Goldsmith of Catcher Media.
My work on participatory video led to a successful bid to the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods for a national network to build capacity for the use of participatory video in research amongst the UK social science community. The network continues and includes academics and practioners the OU, IDS, Bath University, the PyGyWG network, Catcher Media and Insight. The primary output was a training curriculum for the use of participatory video in research, along with a series of public events and training workshops to build awareness and research capacity in this area.
I am a member of the European Society for Rural Sociology, and have convened a working groups on evaluation at the European Congress of Rural Sociology in Wageningen, and on social learning and adaptation in Vaasa in August 2009.
Previous work includes research on sustainable development in Wales, rural research in the UK and the EU (the LEARNing project), and a post-doc project to understand the institutions that shape the UK rural sector's capacity to respond to shocks and trends (the Rapid Climate Change Project). My PhD - "Opening spaces for learning: A systems approach to sustainable development", included fieldwork at IIED in London and in India with a small NGO.
Teaching
I'm course team chair for T214 - Understanding systems: Making sense of complexity, and chaired it's predecessor T205 - Systems Thinking: Principles and Practice. I've also been on the course teams for T890 - Technology Policy and Innovation Research, TXR248 - Systems summer school and the on-campus Post-graduate Research Training Programme. I'm currently developing a course on making digital video as part of the Relevant Knowledge programme.
As a trainer, I've run workshops on systems thinking for the National School of Government, and on social learning in natural resource management in Eastern Europe