BIO OF JACQUELINE HOWELL WASILEWSKI

Jacqueline Howell Wasilewski, Ph.D., is presently a professor at International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. She teaches intercultural communication and conflict resolution in the Department of Communication and Linguistics in the Division of International Studies and in the Graduate School of Public Administration. She received her graduate education at the University of Southern California in international/intercultural education, and her dissertation was on effective multicultural coping and adaptation by Native-, African-, Hispanic- and Asian-Americans. This work was based on 192 life history narratives (autobiographies, autobiographical novels and oral histories). From the mid-1970s to 1990 she worked with Hispanic and Native-American advocacy and community organizations (mostly with the Spanish Education Development [SED] Center in Washington, D.C., and Americans for Indian Opportunity [AIO], formerly in Washington, D.C., now in Albuquerque, New Mexico) and did educationally related projects in the developing world (Ecuador and Papua New Guinea). From the mid-1980s she has worked with Professor Christakis in conjunction with his work with AIO and the development of the Wisdom of the People Fora as noted in Professor Christakis' new book. In 1990 she went to teach in Japan and has been there ever since. She went to Japan out of an interest in consensus-based decision-making which began with her education work with the Cofan people in Ecuador in 1976. Over the years in Japan she has combined her interest in decision-making with her interest in narrative to a current interest in how we can create social spaces in which we can all be ourselves together. The latest manifestation of this interest has been in her current North East Asia Dialogue Project funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education's Center of Excellence funds which brings together students and civil society members from Japan, China, Korea and Russia to consider issues facing the region as a whole. This Project uses both the computer-assisted Structured Design Process as described and discussed in Professor Christakis' book as well as Bohmian Open Dialogue approaches. The former are used for actual issues management, while the latter are used for initial relationship building. She is also working on a set of materials (print and internet) called Finding Your Self in the 21st Century: A GPS (Global Positioning System) for Human Beings.