Publications
Book chapter on Systems Sensing Approach
Book cover image © 2025 Springer Nature
In this new open-access book by Springer, Luea Ritter, Justus Wachs & Nancy Zamierwoski have co-authored a chapter on Systems Sensing Approach.
“Systems sensing is a broad term for somatic approaches that utilize felt senses to expand awareness, providing deeper insights into complex interrelationships within systems, such as organizations or networks. It connects with our inherent capacities for intuiting, perceiving, relating, and sense-making through diverse and subtle ways of knowing.”
The entire book, entitled: Imagining, Designing and Teaching Regenerative Futures: Art-Science Approaches and Inspirations From Around the World explores the potential of transdisciplinary, art-science approaches in addressing current social-ecological complexities within educational contexts via 120 different contributors and the tools found within 65 creative methods - making it a wonderfully inspiring read.
Published: September 16, 2025
Systems Sensing for Transformations Organizations: Lessons from the Transformations Conference 2023
By Justus Wachs and Luea Ritter
Abstract: What lessons can be drawn from our systems sensing practice at the Transformations Conference for application in transformations organizations? We conduct a practitioner reflection on practice to present key insights from facilitating two systems sensing workshops (one in-person, one online) at the Transformations Conference 2023.
JASC cover image by Jean-Baptiste Bonvalot
In the Making
Collective Transitions was invited to submit a piece to JASC for the section “In The Making,” a space to bring new research and thinking to its readership while the work is still in its becoming. We worked in collaboration with JASC to refine the paper and evolve our thinking in the process. JASC invited discussant Raghav Rajagopalan to provide commentary on the piece and its potential contribution to the field.
We are grateful for the opportunity collaborate with thought leaders in the field of awareness-based systems change and contribute to the broader conversation of navigating complexity of societal transformation.
Systems Sensing and Systemic Constellation for Organizational Transformation: Building Collective Capacity for Navigating Complexity
By Luea Ritter and Nancy Zamierowski
Abstract: This paper examines how a systems sensing—or felt-sense—approach and orientation to inquiry and systemic constellations practice might help social change organizations cultivate capacities to better navigate complexity, both in their outer-facing work and internal dynamics as teams and as individuals. We present a pilot study of systemic constellation practice, sharing the experience of participants during and after the practice, as well as our own reflexive process. Currently an undertheorized and underutilized approach within systems thinking work, systems sensing and systemic constellation, can reveal less visible but nevertheless foundational dynamics at play in an organizational body, and can help create more awareness through widening ways of knowing in the organizational playground.
Discussant To In the Making
Realizing Collective Capacities to Navigate Complexity: Topological Sensing Works, but We Know Not How and Why
By Raghav Rajagopalan
Abstract: In describing one experimental approach to building organisational capacity for navigating complexities, an evocative testimony about the shift to discovering a collective capability is embedded in a report on a sensitive research inquiry – into how sensing and perceptions shape unfolding patterns of behaviour and prescribe or circumscribe action potential. The commentary discusses sensing as a tool and the potential role of action research as scientific inquiry into sensing.
Acknowledgements:
We would like to thank Alexander Schieffer, Bonnie Swift, Milla McLachlan, and Libba Pinchot for their inspiration and guidance in navigating the broader action research arc of our paper. Special thanks to Judith Scholes, Lisa Mastney, Dody Riggs, Julia Felder, and Stacey Sude for their valuable feedback on this paper. This paper reflects the collective work of a team of 11 co-researchers, all of which have invested time, energy, and care in the research. We welcome and invite your comments and reactions here.