Meet Eva Pomeroy
Social Innovation, Research and Whole-Heartedly Moving Towards a Kinder World
If you took u.lab 1x or u.lab 2x last year, or joined the Social Field Research Summer School, Eva Pomeroy will not be a new face for you. In fact, participants of the GAIA Journey might also recognize Eva as the researcher who shared so much valuable data from the focus groups she and her team conducted among participants during that 14-week platform in response to the global Covid-19 crisis. With u.lab 1x having launched this month, the first live session happening tomorrow and the second part of the online Social Field Research Summer School taking place in October, we felt that now is a good time to spotlight Eva’s important work.
In addition to heading the Presencing Institute’s (PI) research endeavors, Eva takes on many different roles, including teaching faculty, both at PI and at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where she was the Social Innovator in Residence at the Faculty of Arts and Science from 2017 to 2020. When asked how she arrived at the Presencing Institute, she replied:
“It was a very slow evolution of the relationship.”
Planting a Seed
After returning to teaching, having spent some years home with her two children, Eva encountered Theory U and was immediately fascinated. She took a workshop with Otto, Arawana, and Adam in the summer of 2014, the year before the very first u.lab was launched. When u.lab emerged, Eva participated while holding the question: “What might I bring into my work from this body of work?” She had such a powerful experience on an individual level — “I lived it very deeply” — that it increased her commitment and desire to more fully integrate Theory U into her work. This led her to secure some curriculum innovation funding to shape and run the Concordia Innovation Hub, where she hosted u.lab as a course that undergraduate students could receive credit for.
The innovation hub allowed Eva to come into relationship with the Presencing Institute, in particular receiving hub support from Julie Arts. However, because Eva was running the hub at a university and offering it for credit to undergraduate students — which was quite new at the time — this also brought her into conversation with Otto Scharmer about the work. A year lapsed in between conversations, but during that time Julie asked a question about research and u.lab, which Eva says “planted a seed for me”.
“So we started to experiment with different things, and that brought me into a more collaborative relationship with Julie and Otto.”
This eventually led to Eva being invited in to co-hold the Social Field Research Summer School that kicked off in 2019 and continues online this year.
Doors Opening
The Concordia Innovation Hub created quite a stir, not just with PI, but also in the University itself. While they were running the hub, Eva says: “The Faculty of Arts and Science got wind of it, and they were quite excited by it. They were excited, generally, about the idea of lab learning in Social Sciences and Humanities.” Due to this interest, Eva was not only able to secure the funding for the u.lab hub, but it essentially opened the doors to her subsequent role at the university.
After Eva had run the hub for a year, the director of Faculty and Science asked her: “if you were going to design a job, what would it be?” Eva responded that it would be running u.lab and doing research around it, which is precisely what ended up happening. “It was a dream come true….”’ Eva reflects. This then led to another dream come true — working for the Presencing Institute and giving leadership to the organization’s research intention, in part through co-hosting the Social Field Research Summer School.
The Social Field
The Social Field Research Summer School, which began last year and is a ten year long project, aims to bring together researchers, academics, students, and practitioners around awareness based systems change and the concept of the Social Field. The two main intentions of the summer school were: to bring together people in order to “help create connections that would ultimately lead to collaboration and new work.” The other intention was to “push the envelope around our [PI’s] own methods.” The Presencing Institute “is really trying to address and access an area of knowing that really hasn’t been looked at… and that’s knowing from the source, both individually and collectively.” So, this second intention looks to engage in practices that push forward methods around source knowing.
The social field as a concept addresses our collective being together on a source level and “has the potential to transform the way we operate as a society at large.” The importance of clarifying the concept of the social field, through research, plays into both the intention of being immediately useful, as well as contributing to the broader field. By researching and refining this concept, it can be put “back out into the world, and people can pick it up and say that’s really helpful, and it gives me some indicator of where I might want to intervene in my own system to enhance the quality of how we are together and what we do.”
Since GAIA, Eva has been (re-)asking the question of what can we learn about the social field from this? In Eva’s words: “how can we help articulate what it [the social field] is and how it works based on this data?” Through researching this concept of the social field, Eva and the Summer School hope to bring this concept, made accessible through a set of practices, into the mainstream. “This is a big endeavor, and it would mean a big shift in how we think about collective experience.”
Weaving Together Research and Teaching
There was one moment, in the middle of one of the Concordia Innovation Hubs, where Eva allowed for a moment of reflection; a moment which brought together research and practice via the question of what is shifting for me, and what contributed to that shift? And what’s shifting for us together?
On the one hand, “that’s great research data.” At the same time, it is an extremely helpful process for the participants and the hosts. Because, “to be able to stop, helicopter up and actually see what’s happening, naming it, and having a space to make sense of it together,” allows for the learning space to become more self-aware. As a result, the second half of the hub Eva felt how the group was much more conscious of itself and of the process.
This midway participatory action research, in the form of a ‘retreat and reflect moment’, could be integrated into any kind of learning process, “even in quite traditional institutions.” Wherever there is engagement with any kind of content, seeing as all courses have some kind of content, “you can engage with a sensing perspective.” What that would mean is: “giving a little bit more space and saying…as I read this material and as I do this research, what’s the deeper significance for me? For the world?” Integrating the ‘retreat and reflect moment’ would mean giving a little bit of space in order to ask about what is being learned, and why it matters.
It also means asking about “what is the significance of this either for my next steps or my life path?” Asking this question can allow students to shape their own projects, or co-shape the courses themselves. This also shows the importance of structure. No matter how well a space is fostered, how safe and warm it may be, if it is not paired with structure and process, “it is not necessarily a learning space.” In short: “process, structure, and practice move learning forward.”
Tapping into “What is My Piece?”
What drives Eva’s work, “on the deepest level,” is the wish for a kinder, “more humane, life supporting world.” Eva believes that everyone plays a role in determining what kind of world we live in and has something to contribute. Eva is tapping into the question: what is my piece? And then, to “really trust that what surfaces from that is right.”
Trusting in that can be hard, sometimes: “I have to say, for example writing a piece about the social field, I sometimes think… really Eva? That’s your piece for a kinder world?” But Eva believes that to have faith in whatever surfaces, when we tap deeply into what our piece is, is right.
“If I bring my whole heart to that, it will have the impact that it’s meant to in the world.”
Video of the interview:
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