Nora Bateson will reconvene with Báyò Akómoláfé and Alex Forrester for “Unnamed: a Conversation at the Edge of Sense” on March 7th in Great Barrington, MA.
Nora is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer and educator, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. She wrote, directed, and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson. Her work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems. Her book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, released by Triarchy Press in 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity, and the core text of the Harvard University LILA program 2017-18. Her book, Combining, was published in September 2023 by Triarchy Press. Nora was the recipient of the 2019 Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. Her new book Belly is going to be released in May 2026.
The International Bateson Institute integrates the sciences, arts, and professional knowledge to create a qualitative inquiry of the integration of life. As President, Nora directs research projects that require multiple contexts of research and interdependent processes—asking, “How we can create a context in which to study the contexts?” An impressive team of international thinkers, scientists, and artists have been brought together by the Institute to generate an innovative form of inquiry, which Nora coined “Transcontextual Research,” and the corresponding new form of information she dubbed: “Warm Data”. A group process created by Nora, called the ‘Warm Data Lab,’ has been the public outreach model of this research.
Her speaking engagements include keynote addresses and lectures at international conferences and universities on a wide range of topics that span the fields of anti-fascism, ecology, education, the arts, family therapy, leadership and many more aspects of advocacy for living systems– she travels between conversations in different fields bringing multiple perspectives into view to reveal larger patterns.
Unnamed gathers two thinkers – Nora Bateson and Bayo Akomolafe – to sit at the edge. They gather not to explain. They gather not to solve. They gather to notice what trembles just before language coheres, and to ask: what forms of aliveness are stirring outside the logics of healing, justice, and progress?
Please join us on March 7th.
Warmest Wishes,
Staff of the Schumacher Center