Karena Kyne, a PhD student based in PPR (Politics, Philosophy & Religion) recently presented at the Innovation Methodologies for Defence Challenges conference, which was held on 30th January 2018, at Saint Paul University, Ottawa together with the Canadian Forces College’s Centre for National Security Studies, the Royal Military College Saint-Jean, the Center for International Policy Studies, and the Mapping and Charting Establishment.

The three-day event was organized by Philippe Beaulieu-B (Canadian Forces College) and Philippe Dufort (Saint Paul University) who arranged a practitioner based conference with fascinating workshops, talks and activities. Key note speakers, Dr. James Greer Leads Institute, Ofra Graicier Israel Defence Dorce, Ben Zweibelson Program Director for Special Operations Forces Design Education at the Joint Special Operations University, Dr. Harold Nelson University of Montanna, Antoine Bousquet, Birkbeck University of London and arak Barkawi, London School of Economics were among the guests at this event.

Karena Kyne’s paper, interestingly titled “Methods for Tracing Impacts of the Pace of Change Via the Amazon Effect, Black Mirror Thinking and Fish Tank Events” presented her concepts with reference to Charlie Brooker’s anthology series Black Mirror and theorized the character of the desire and need for just-in-time delivery with reference to electronic commerce company Amazon.com.

Karena’s aim was to ground theory into practice in through accessible concepts, in order to think through how to apply post modern, critical and reflexive thinking within a practitioner context. Her theme was: how do we speak and think about the impacts of the accelerated pace of change in relation to military logistics and technology?

The aim of the conference was to ask why and how both military commanders and also military institutions are integrating reflexivity, critical thinking and post-modern insights, with a focus on practitioners. Karena was funded by Security Lancaster Mini Project fund. You can find out more details here.