Professor Katherine Daniell, Director of The Australian National University (ANU) School of Cybernetics, has been elected Vice President of the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR), the peak global body for systems and cybernetics learned societies and research organisations.
Professor Daniell will serve on the IFSR executive committee from 2026-2028 alongside President Nora Bateson—daughter of the renowned cybernetician and ecologist Gregory Bateson. The federation represents over 30,000 systems researchers and practitioners from more than 50 member organisations worldwide, including the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the System Dynamics Society.
Her election is both a personal honour and a recognition of the University’s pioneering role in systems research, education, and practice—a legacy that predates the IFSR’s establishment.
A legacy of systems thinking#
“ANU has led and participated in national and international systems research over much of its history, through many of its transdisciplinary programs, centres, and units,” Professor Daniell says.
“This includes the Human Sciences Program, Administrative Studies Program, Urban Studies Unit, and Centre for Continuing Education, as well as the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies. It also encompasses leading systems researchers and practitioners, including those in computing and operations research in the 1970s.”
She notes that over the past 50 years, ANU research, education, and organisational structures have evolved in multiple ways, leading to contemporary programs like ANU systems engineering, integration and implementation sciences (i2S), university-wide transdisciplinary institutes and the work of the ANU College of Systems and Society.
“These developments enliven the interplay between disciplinary and transdisciplinary excellence at the university,” she explains.
A transdisciplinary journey#
Professor Daniell’s own story is deeply intertwined with ANU systems research tradition. After more than 20 years at ANU, she now leads one of the University’s most transdisciplinary schools.
“The ANU School of Cybernetics is radically transdisciplinary, and focused on societal transformation, complex systems and technology,” she says.
“Although it may not be well known yet, the development of this young school has been shaped by many people and thinking linked to a multitude of ANU and international collaborative and systems-oriented units, programs, and ventures.”
The School builds on a rich history, including the ANU Administrative Studies Program of the 1970s—where cybernetics was first taught as a subject for interdisciplinary public servants—and the Centre for Continuing Education, where Merrelyn and Fred Emery pioneered participatory search conferences.
Photo: Katherine Daniell
“The network of people who have built the school includes many from the unsuccessful but still important ANU grand challenges pitches like ‘Navigating Disruptive Futures’ and ‘Planetary Health’ in 2017,” Professor Daniell adds.
Photo: Katherine Daniell
“The School is a collaborative venture built to bring people together with vastly different expertise, life experiences, knowledges, and practices to shape safer, more sustainable, and responsible futures, including with technology.”
From diverse roots to systems leadership#
Professor Daniell’s path to systems leadership reflects her diverse educational and personal background. Coming from a mixed socio-economic family—one side highly educated, the other working-class—she grew up with a blend of practical and intellectual experiences, from paint stripping and bricklaying to library visits and studying Australian wildflower taxonomy.
Despite early advice against pursuing robotics, she completed a double degree in Civil Engineering and Arts, followed by a transdisciplinary PhD with a John Monash Scholarship across five institutions, including AgroParisTech, ANU, CSIRO, and French research bodies. Her doctoral research focused on collective organisation of participatory water governance across multiple countries.
Since then, she has worked across multiple ANU schools and institutes, including the Centre for Policy Innovation, HC Coombs Policy Forum (Crawford School), Centre for European Studies (RSSS), the Pacific Institute, ICEDS, the Fenner School, 3Ai, and the Institute for Water Futures, with the objective of bridging and translating across people and their knowledge systems for sustainable development in innovative and meaningful ways.
“Part of my research agenda has focused on systems and transdisciplinarity themselves,” she says.
“We’re currently working on a history of transdisciplinarity related to cybernetics and engineering industry PhD training in France and Australia, among other interests, to inform future research and innovation policy.”
Navigating change together#
Professor Daniell sees parallels between today’s societal challenges and past periods of rapid change and revolutions linked to emerging technologies, and linked societal and environmental anxiety, such as the early 1800s, late 1940s, and late-mid 1960s and 1970s.
“If the nation and world are going to get through this period like the last ones, then we need to band together in hope and support each other to navigate through the dangerous waves,” she says. “All of our contributions will be very important.”
Taking inspiration from famous French ‘undisciplined’ complexity thinking and systems researcher Edgar Morin who passed away at 104 this year, she offers advice.
“Our common enemy should be hate, as by removing hate and being curious about those people, environmental systems and technologies we don’t understand or agree with, we can stop future atrocities from happening and do the cross-systems learning and growing required to flourish together.”
Her election to the IFSR executive committee underscores the University’s enduring influence in systems research and its commitment to transdisciplinary solutions for complex global challenges.