Alexander "Aleco" Christakis (Greek: Αλέξανδρος Χρηστάκης; born 1937) is a Greek American social scientist, systems scientist and cyberneticist, former faculty member of several Universities, organizational consultant and member of the Club of Rome, known for his "study and design of social systems".[1]
Christakis serves on the Editorial Boards of several journals, including Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences, Systems: Journal of Transdisciplinary Systems Science, and the Journal of Applied Systems Studies.
In 2002, Christakis served as president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He also serves as president of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras,[4] a non-profit organization dedicated to the evolution of civic, global, and institutional capacity for coordinated democratic decision-making using systems principles (Co-Laboratories of Democracy.) The Institute for 21st Century Agoras is credited for the formalization of the science of Structured dialogic design in its present form. Christakis is also a partner with Dialogic Design International,[5] a consulting firm that deploys SDD in systemic design approaches for complex organizational and systems problems.
In 2007 he served on the board of directors of the Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO), of Future Worlds Center, and also as an Advisor to the Ambassadors Program of AIO which serves indigenous people around the world.[6]
He has received numerous awards and distinctions including the Demosophia Award,[7] the Creative Programming Award from the National University Continuing Education Association[8] and the most prestigious medal of the Hellenic Society for Systemic Studies to name a few.
Contributions to international peace building
Christakis has been invited to support the peace process in Cyprus and the Middle East. He and Laouris led the implementation of series of mass scale dialogues using the structured dialogic design process in the Civil Society Dialogue project in Cyprus and in the Act Beyond Borders project in Middle East.[9]
Publications
Christakis has published over 100 papers on the management of complexity in refereed journals. He is also the co-author of three books on "Technology Assessment". Books:
2009. The Talking Point:Creating an Environment for Exploring Complex Meaning. With T.R. Flanangan. Boston, MA: Information Age Publishing.
2006. Co-laboratories of democracy: how people harness their collective wisdom to create the future. With Kenneth C. Bausch. Boston, MA: Information Age Publishing.
2009. Interview: Learnings and Vistas based on revisiting 40 years of the "Global Problematique"[1] Interview in Europe'sWorld by Heiner Benking [2], November, 2009
2011. Interview: The Predicament of the Individual, Communities, and Humankind in the 21st Century[3]Archived 2012-11-29 at the Wayback Machine by Heiner Benking [4], September 2011
References
^Biography Alexander N. Christakis, January 17, 2003.
^By John N. Warfield awarded in 1993 by Roxana Cardenas during an International Conference at ITESM, which is the most prominent Mexican University System
^Awarded in 1983 while Aleco Christakis was teaching at the University of Virginia
Review Dialogue for the Information Age Democracy, by Alexander N. Christakis, 2005.
Institute for 21st Century Agoras [5] a non-profit organization founded by Christakis with Kenneth Bausch to promote the pursuit of democratic approaches to collective wisdom and decision making made possible with Co-Laboratories of Democracy.
