DESCRIPTION
Across the world, we are facing a crisis in education at all levels: for some communities, schooling remains inaccessible, and for others, educational institutions have become elite qualification factories.
What kind of knowledge do we need to survive in the present century and next? Do the current modes of knowledge creation and application address the challenges of the 21st century? How do we bridge the dichotomy between being and knowing, research and innovation, theory and practice?
In The Idea of the Communiversity, the authors propose a new approach to the economic, social, technological, educational and moral transformation of society. This book takes an integral world's approach to societal transformation, by pointing to ways in which we can reform our modes of knowledge creation. Through the fourfold model of community, pilgrimium, academy and co-laboratory, Lessem, Adodo and Bradley--all intellectual and grassroots activists--have re-conceptualised a university for every people and culture, centred on the need to think local and act global. We have seen the eras of post-colonialism and decoloniality. This book ushers us into a new one--that of the Communiversity.
Author Biography:
Professor Ronnie Samanyanga Lessem, born in Zimbabwe and now based in the UK, was co-founder, together with Dr Alexander Schieffer of TRANS4M (Hotonnes) which has since evolved, in part, into Trans4m Communiversity Associates (TCA), which together with Trans4m's partner university, Da Vinci Institute in South Africa, founded by Nelson Mandela, focuses on Doctoral Programmes, on the regeneration of particular societies. It is currently mainly active through its emerging communiversities in Southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe), West Africa (Nigeria), the Middle East (Egypt, Jordan), the Near East (Pakistan) and Europe (Switzerland, Sloveni, UK). Hitherto Ronnie Lessem has launched projects on European management with IMD in Switzerland, European-ness and Innovation with Roland Berger Foundation in Germany, African management, with Wits Graduate Business School in South Africa and Arab as well as Islamic Management with TEAM International in Cairo and Jordan. He studied economics at the University of Zimbabwe, the economics of industry at the London School of Economics, Corporate Planning at Harvard Business School and has since written some 50 books, the most recent, with Anselm Adodo and Tony Bradley, co-founders of TCA together with Aneeqa Malik, on The Idea of the Communiversity. Father Anselm Adodo is a member of the Benedictine order of the Catholic Church. He was ordained a priest in 1997. He is the founder and Director of Nigeria's foremost herbal research institute, the Pax Herbal Clinic and Research Laboratories, popularly called Pax Herbals. He is a prominent advocate of African Herbal medicine research, indigenous knowledge systems, rural community development, health policy reform and transformation of education in Africa. Anselm's approach to research is transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary and this reflects in his publications. He is an adjunct visiting lecturer at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he teaches African Transformation studies and Traditional African Medicine. He is an Adjunct Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Nigeria, a Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Botanists and a Senior Fellow at Trans4m centre for Integral Development, France. Revd Tony Bradley is Lecturer in Social Economy and Enterprise within Liverpool Hope University Business School, U.K. He has had an unusual career progression, having been, in turn, a university academic, an Anglican priest, a TV and radio producer, a social entrepreneur, a theatrical producer and director, a professional script-writer and, for a second time, a university academic. This progression has, itself, modelled an integral journey of four worlds in one life. Although permanently resident in the UK, he has worked on a range of projects in West Africa, South-West Asia and the Middle East. His most recent social innovation work has been in the arts and social economy sphere in NW England. He is Chair of Trustees for The Old Courts, Wigan and co-leader of the team developing Communiversity Liverpool. The Idea of the Communiversity is his ninth book. He lives in the English Lake District with his wife Carol, their two daughters, their partners, two grandchildren and two dogs.
