Alexander Christakis
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Alexander (Aleco) Christakis (1937 Athens, Greece) is a Greek American social scientist, former faculty member of several Universities, organizational consultant and member of the Club of Rome, know for his "study and design of social systems".[1]
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[edit] Biography
Christakis came to the United States in 1956, and received a BA in theoretical physics at Princeton University and a Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics at Yale. Later on he proceeded studying urban planning, and systems science until 1970.
In the 1960s he returned to Greece and joined the architectural firm of Doxiadis Associates, which was specialized in architecture and town planner. In 1968 he was co-founder of the Club of Rome, where he was a collaborator of Aurelio Peccei, Erich Jantsch and Hasan Özbekhan. Since the 1970s Christakis has served on the faculties of Yale University, Georgetown University, University of Athens, and the University of Virginia. He also spent five years at George Mason University as the Director of the Center for Interactive Management. In 1989 Christakis founded his own management consultancy firm CWA Ltd. dedicated to apply Interactive Management principles, and he has been CEO ever since.
Further more he serves on the Editorial Boards of several journals, such as Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences, Systems: Journal of Transdiscplinary Systems Science, and the Journal of Applied Systems Studies.
In 2002, Dr. Christakis served as President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He also serves as President of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras [2], a Think Tank dedicated to the practice of Co-Laboratories of Democracy around the world. More recently he served as co-founder of the "Lovers of Democracy"[3] and the Blogora [4]. In 2007 he was serving on the Board of Directors of the Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO), and also as an Advisor to the Ambassadors Program of AIO, which serves indigenous people around the world [5], and as a Managing Partner of Leading Design International [6], a consulting firm dedicated to building design cultures in organizations.
He has received numerous awards and distinctions including the "DEMOSOPHIA Award," the "Creative Programming Award" from the National University Continuing Education Association, to name a few.
[edit] Publications
Christakis has published over 100 papers on the management of complexity in refereed journals. He is also the co-author of two books on "Technology Assessment". Books:
- 2006. Co-laboratories of democracy: how people harness their collective wisdom to create the future. With Kenneth C. Bausch. Boston, MA: Information Age Publishing.
- 2005. Pragmatic Design Dialogue.
Articles and papers, a selection:
- 1970. "The Predicament of Mankind Quest for Structured Responses for Growing World-wide Complexities and Uncertainties". With co-authors like Hasan Ozbekhan, Erich Jantch, Peccei, ...and others (PDF)
- 2004. "Retrospective Inquiry of the predicament of menkind prospectus of the Club of Rome"
[edit] References
- ^ Biography Alexander N. Christakis, January 17, 2003.
- ^ Global Agoras
- ^ http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/loversofdemocracy/InquiryDesignTeam.htm
- ^ The Blogora - Blogora, Working in Dialogue
- ^ Americans for Indian Opportunity
- ^ LDi
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[edit] External links
- Biography Alexander N. Christakis, 2003.
- Review Dialogue for the Information Age Democracy, by Alexander N. Christakis, 2005.
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