Welcome

WELCOME is a unique research and enterprise community. It aims at bringing complexity thinking to the understanding of communication, participation, knowledge creation and leadership. It develops approaches for enhancing wellbeing working with individuals and organisations.

The WELCOME community involves practitioners from the public and private sectors and researchers from science, engineering, information and communication technologies; health, art and design. Working together they share insights of the most important challenge that we face as humans: creating the life we truly desire.

WELCOME works in partnerships across Northumbria University, and at local, national and international level. It aims to:

• link academics and practitioners from different backgrounds;
• support innovative trans-disciplinary research projects;
• provide training and consultancy.
  

Complexity Thinking

In complexity thinking it is the connections which matter and 'how connections of different kinds alternate and overlap or combine to determine the texture of the whole.' Werner Heisenberg

Our focus is on

• Social phenomena as emerging in the mutual interrelationships
  of the human condition, behaviour and external environment.
• Working across the boundaries in understanding and improving
  human organisations.
• Individual wellbeing as part of a wider context, which includes life
  style, behaviour, social and physical environments, and the link
  between physical, mental and social aspects of wellbeing.

Current Research Projects

• Information Behaviour in Organisations
• Environment and Wellbeing
• Minimally Invasive Methods in ICT Adoption
• Complexity and Policy in the Voluntary Sector
• Design of ICT for Community Participation
• Approach to Leadership
• Strategy Development
• Facilitation of Virtual Communities

Training and Consultancy

We organise training events which link practitioners from the public and private sectors, academics, researchers and consultants and provide a growing resource of expertise.

WELCOME is hosted at the School of Computing Engineering & Information Sciences and led by:

• Dr Petia Sice, Academic Lead and Facilitator
• Prof Safwat Mansi, Head of Enterprise
• Janice McLeod, Co-ordinator of Events - janice.mcleod@northumbria.ac.uk