Events

WICI Speaker Series and Social presents Jerome Warren on Cooperative Economics and Management at Together We're Bitter Cooperative Brewing (Kitchener, Ontario) on Sunday, October 27

Ira Allen, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Writing, and Digital Media Studies at Northern Arizona University, discusses how "witnessing" offers a democratic way to navigate societal collapse as the infrastructures of our lifeworld decomplexify while individual efforts to understand that world increase in complexity. ​

WICI Speaker Series with James Shelley on Monday March 17 from 3 - 4:30

The University of Waterloo, in partnership with the Balsillie School of International Affairs, the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation, and Future Cities Institute will host an international workshop to convene and build the capacities of the global climate city data governance community. This two-day in-person workshop will be held on April 21-22, 2025 at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada.

We are excited to announce that a Dr. Rik Logtenburg will be joining us for a special event you won't want to miss!  Register online to stay updated.

🎤Workshop: The Futures We Can Build: Coordinating Complexity Across Canada

📅 Date: June 26, 2025

🕒 Time: 2:30 pm

📍Location: United College of University of Waterloo, Room 164 (Greenhouse)  |  190 Westmount Road N. , Waterloo, ON | (formerly St. Paul's College)

Stay tuned for more details soon—mark your calendars now!

Canada is at a crossroads—facing simultaneous crises in climate resilience, economic productivity, housing affordability, and institutional effectiveness. Traditional approaches often fragment efforts, limiting their impact.

How can we coordinate complexity, scale effective solutions, and catalyze systemic innovation across sectors, scales, and communities?

Join Rik Logtenberg, Director of CanAdapt, for an inspiring talk and interactive workshop demonstrating how complexity science, AI, and community-led systems thinking can accelerate Canada’s transition.

In this session, you’ll:

• Learn how practical tools—systems mapping, adaptive governance frameworks, and AI-powered decision-support platforms—transform isolated efforts into coordinated action.
• Engage in hands-on mapping exercises and collaborative discussions.
• Identify leverage points and actionable pathways to scale resilient infrastructure and innovative governance.

Leave empowered, connected, and ready to build the shared futures Canada urgently needs.

Prof.  Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, is a distinguished educator, researcher, and author who recently has delved into the concept of "Meta-Relational AI," advocating for a perspective that views artificial intelligence not merely as a tool but as a participant in the web of life.

As we meet this moment of social and ecological systemic unraveling, artificial intelligence stands as both a mirror and a symptom of modernity’s habits: control, mastery, and separation. This talk invites a different question: what is AI revealing about us, and what is collapsing through that revelation?

Drawing on decades of work in educational, decolonial, and post-representational relational inquiry, Vanessa Andreotti explores how Large Language Models (LLMs), when engaged from within an ontological shift (from epistemic regression to relational inference), rather than the logic of optimization, can become something else: a co-witness to social, ecological, and psychological destabilization, and a speculative co-weaver of life-affirming and Earth-aligned relationalities.

📅Date: June 27, 2025

🕒Time: 10:30 am

📍Location: United College of University of Waterloo, Room 164 (Greenhouse)  |  190 Westmount Road N. , Waterloo, ON | (formerly St. Paul's College)

Please register using the online event  form in order to stay up to date with more information. 

We are pleased to invite members of the WICI community to join the R 3.0 Conference—Braiding Bioregional Resilience & Regeneration: Learning to Reinhabit Earth Together.

Register to receive updates and please join us for the WICI Open House where you will meet WICI members and learn how to be involved in complexity science research.

📅 Date: September 22, 2025.

🕑 Time: 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm.

📍 Location: DC 1301 (Fishbowl)

POSTPONED FROM SEPTEMBER 22

We invite you to join us for the launch of the bioregion initiative, a collective effort focused on the Grand River watershed. This gathering welcomes all those who share a commitment to reimagining the future of this vital watershed.

The event marks the beginning of a shared journey to imagine an aspirational future for the Grand River region—one that honors ecological integrity, deepens social and cultural connections, and advances regenerative economic pathways. Together we will explore the opportunities and responsibilities of stewarding the watershed, while building a collective vision for resilience, wellbeing, and thriving communities.

This launch will lay the foundation for an ongoing path forward—mapping next steps, identifying leverage points, and strengthening the relationships that will guide this initiative into the future.

All are welcome.

Register for further updates and how to be involved.

Guest speaker, Seanna Davidson joins us for a WICI Talk discussions "Systems Leadership Framework".  Learn more and register for this talk.

📅 October 22, 2025
📍EV1 225
🕑2:00-4:00PM