Professor Eve Mitleton-Kelly

Professor Eve Mitleton-Kelly is founder and Director of the Complexity Research Programme at the London School of Economics. She has developed a theory of complex social systems and an integrated methodology using both qualitative and quantitative tools and methods. The theory is being used for teaching at universities around the world, including at an EPSRC-funded short course at LSE, to train researchers. She has edited a volume and written on complexity.

Eve’s recent work has concentrated on the implications of the theories of complexity for organizations and specifically on strategy and policy development and on the creation of enabling environments to address apparently intractable problems in business and the public sector. She has led, and participated in, projects addressing practical problems using complexity theory, funded by the EPSRC, ESRC, AHRC, the European Commission, business and government, including: alignment between IT and the rest of the business; the reduction of problems associated with IT legacy systems; identification of initial requirements and inter-organisational relationships in the supply chain; lack of organisational (e.g. post M&A) integration (one of the largest EPSRC-funded projects awarded to the LSE with many business partners); corporate governance; leadership in the NHS, Defra, and many other organisations in the private and public sectors; sustainable development in communities, organizational learning, the emergence of new organizational forms, the ‘design’ of organizations, co-evolutionary sustainability, innovation in the private and public sector, diversity, art & complexity, disaster risk reduction in West African States, energy & climate change. Her first career between 1967-83, was with the British Civil Service in the Department of Trade and Industry, where she was involved in the formulation of policy and the negotiation of EU Directives.

She is visiting Professor at the Open University; member of the Scientific Advisory Board to the ‘Next Generation Infrastructures Foundation’, Delft University of Technology; on the Editorial Board  of the Journal of ‘Emergence: Complexity & Organisations’; was Coordinator of Links with Business, Industry and Government of the European Complex Systems Network of Excellence, Exystence (2003-2006); Member of the AHRC/EPSRC research cluster Embracing Complexity in Design; Member of ONCE-CS Coordinating Action on Complex Systems; Director of the UK Complexity Society; Executive Co-ordinator of SOL-UK (London) (Society for Organisational Learning) 1977-2008; and Policy Advisor to European and USA organisations including Citibank New York, GSK, Rolls-Royce, the European Commission, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior, and several UK Government Departments.