Em Lenartowicz

Em Lenartowicz is a social scientist with a PhD in humanistic management and backgrounds in social epistemology, theoretical linguistics, and complexity studies. In her academic work, she seeks to advance the underpinnings that govern the evolution of intelligence in human systems at multiple scales. She is interested in the philosophy of cognitive science and conceptual approaches to the evolution of collective intelligence and distributed cognition. She is also the author of the Institutions series - a blend of magical realism, philosophical satire, and metafiction exploring the form of an institution as a "forgotten genre of the liberal arts."

From 2014 to 2024, Lenartowicz participated in several interdisciplinary research projects at CLEA, focusing on collective intelligence and cognition. In 2015-2018 she was the managing director of our Global Brain Institute, in 2018-2021 the designer and first director of the Postgraduate School of Thinking VUB, and in 2021-2024 the principal of CLEA's spinoff educational outreach initiative, Buckminster College. She taught "Complexity and Evolution" and "Technology and Society" courses at the Department of Philosophy VUB and "The Locus of Thought" and "Thinking Studio" classes at the School of Thinking. For a few years, she was hosting the CLEA open seminar series.

In 2024, she joined the executive fellowship of NuNet, a project founded by two CLEA researchers, Dr Kabir Veitas and Dr Weaver Weinbaum. NuNet aims to build a global economy of decentralised computing, democratising access to computing resources worldwide.

In 2025, Lenartowicz was appointed to the Steering Committee of the United Nations' "AI for Good" Impact Initiative. Drawing on her work in complexity and collective intelligence, she developed the AI Commons (AIC) Framework - a modular licensing instrument for governing the deployment terms on which AI capabilities enter the world. Starting in 2026, she is coordinating the AIC Working Group, which is currently hosted at CLEA.

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