Dr Marcus Bussey | UniSC | University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia

Dr Marcus Bussey is an educator and futurist with more than 40 years’ experience. He has taught widely throughout Australia having spent 5 years at a yoga based neohumanist school, 4 years in an urban community school run by a parent cooperative, 7 years in Montessori primary and high schools, and 20 years at USC where he currently teaches world history and the philosophy of history. He is also heavily involved with supervision of higher degree students and is deeply committed to the University’s goals of increased research capacity and quality research with high impact. Marcus is also the Deputy Head, UniSC Sustainability Research Centre where he is involved with a range of sustainability and environmental communication research projects.

In 2014 Marcus was awarded a Taiwan Fellowship for 2014. This fellowship allowed him to work with colleagues at Tamkang University and the National Taiwan University on developing futures thinking in undergraduate engineering students. The outcomes of this research engagement appeared in the research paper he publishes with Song, Mei Mei Song and Hsieh (Patrick) Shang-Hsien: Anticipatory Imagination as a Tool for Rethinking Engineering Education which appeared in the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, 143(4).

Marcus has presented papers on futures, phenomenology, anticipatory aesthetics and intercultural engagement in Taiwan, Croatia, Israel, India, Sweden, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Finland, Denmark, Brazil, France, Timor Leste, Portugal and the US. In 2003, he completed a pilot study for the Queensland Department of Families as part of their project 'Queensland 2020: A State for All Ages'. This included a stimulus paper and 20-minute video, both entitled 'Youth Voices: Young Queenslander’s Values in a Time of Structural Ageing'.

As noted above Marcus is a researcher involved with UniSC's Sustainability Research Centre (SRC). Core interests are social learning and adaptive capacity in which all theory is grounded in practice and hope is built into all research premises and processes. He is interested in the intersection of cultures and their languages and loves to run embodied workshops that build personal agency and capacity along with inclusivity and a tolerance for complexity, chaos and open-ended processes (rather than answers). He is committed to also developing, via such approaches, the theoretical confidence to advocate for these in professional and community contexts.

In keeping with this research focus he has co-edited the 2019 Routledge publication The Dynamics of Dissent: Theorising Movements for Inclusive Futures, the 2020 Palgrave publication Phenomenologies of Grace: The Body, Embodiment and Transformative Futures and Routledge’s 2023 publication Transitional Selves: Possibilities for Identity in a Plurified World. He considers himself a ‘serial collaborator’ who focuses on the potential of co-creation to generate the sparks that bring about transformations in society and individuals. His next co-edited book is again with Routledge and will appear later in 2024, entitled: Passion and Purpose in the Humanities: Exploring the Worlds of Early Career Researchers.

Marcus is passionate about alternative ways of communicating emergent knowledge in wicked times. In this area he is leading with Gary Crew, Lisa Chandler and Rachel Robinson, a special issue of the journal TEXT on the theme of Anticipatory Imaginaries. This issue, published in October 2018, includes creative works written and produced in response to stimulus from a discipline expert. Such work is being continued in his collaboration with Indian scholars in the important Virtues in Movement Project.

Committed to putting Futures thinking into action Marcus was Chief Investigator (CI) on a USC/Sunshine Coast Council regional partnership exploring Excellence in Community Engagement (2019-2021). He is also a CI in the MISTRA funded project TRANSEC exploring environmental communication in wicked times.

Marcus has authored over 150 articles and book chapters. In addition to the two texts mentioned above, Marcus has co-edited both Neohumanist Educational Futures: Liberating the Pedagogical Intellect (Tamkang University Press: 2006) and Alternative Educational Futures: Pedagogies for Emergent Worlds (Sense Publishers, 2008) with Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana Milojević, and co-authored Futures Thinking for Social Foresight with Richard Slaughter (2005). Furthermore, he co-edited with Jennifer Fitzgerald the book Fire in Our Eyes, Flowers in Our Hearts: Tantric Women Tell Their Stories (Gurukula Press, 2007).

Marcus has two books of poetry in print. The first was Clare and Francis: Conversations of Divine Love (Blue Dolphin Publishing, 2012). This book of poetry was translated into Bengali and published as Clare and Francis: Divya Prem Sanglap. (Trans: Meera Chakravorty) in 2018 by New Baipatra, Kolkata. A second is The Next Big Thing! published by Studera Publications in 2019. He has also co-edited the book of poetry, Carry Your Little Flute (2019)  Writers Workshop and Beyond Alienation, Hatred and Terror (2022) Authors Press.

His most recent article is entitled: Navigating the Ruins of the Future

Stay in touch with Marcus and visit his other sites:

• Marcus Bussey on Twitter *
  
• LinkedIn profile*
• https://medium.com/@MarcusBussey*
• Marcus Bussey on Rising Star*

* This is an external website and the University of the Sunshine Coast is not responsible for the content.