Em Lenartowicz

Em Lenartowicz is a social scientist with a PhD in humanistic management and backgrounds in organisational development (OD), social philosophy, cognitive science, 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.

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 Faculty of Arts and Philosophy VUB and “Thinking Studio” and “Symbolic Cognition” at the School of Thinking. In 2026-27 she is teaching “Technology and Society.”

In 2025, Lenartowicz was appointed to the Steering Committee of the United Nations' AI for Good Impact Initiative. Drawing on her work on the self-organisation of social systems, she developed a licence framework for AI deployments, initially hosted at CLEA. From November 2026 the framework - now called Deployment Commitments - continues at AI Commons, where she chairs the working group stewarding its further development and implementation.

Academic Books by Em Lenartowicz: