Blog
What’s on our minds
We share what we learn and what we’re doing so that others can learn from us and we can learn from others. Comments welcome!
Spontaneous leadership in the wild
There is no substitute for the real thing. We hope to field a small team of researchers sometime in 2017 for a field-based case study. This is contingent on the vagaries of disaster, funding, and prior commitments. In the meantime, we are working on ways to identify and connect with spontaneous leaders while an event is unfolding.
Aaron Vanek
Aaron Vanek has nearly 30 years experience playing and creating games, primarily live-action and tabletop roleplaying games. He has worked with many national non-profit, community, and commercial organizations to produce fun and engaging learning events. He has published numerous tabletop roleplaying game adventures as well as critical theory essays about live-action roleplaying and its use in education. Teaching analog game design in elementary and middle school, and 20 years in film and video production have honed his creative talents.
He currently works for The Game Academy, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that produces and utilizes roleplaying games to teach.
Aaron is the lead designer for our immersive learning experiences.
Research roundtables
We combine emergent leadership and improvised crisis response. There are others who are interested in each of these areas. To learn from and encourage their efforts, we would like to hold a series of virtual roundtable discussions. These sessions would allow researchers and practitioners to explore key topics of interest together.
Community crisis courses
Our community crisis courses hope to focus on communities that are coping with ongoing internal conflict. We imagine conducting a series of pre-event workshops with representatives from different community parties. These would explore how a spontaneous leader might change the outcome of a critical incident. They would also look at what local conditions prevent individuals from stepping up. These insights would then go into a learning experiences tailored by and for the community.
We are hoping to do a pilot course in Milwaukee. It would focus on gun violence.
Zeno E. Franco, PhD
Zeno Franco brings a background in clinical psychology, community engagement, the psychology of crisis response, and heroic action to throw light on the relationship between individual action and group behavior. He is widely published on topics ranging from evidence-based approaches to treatment of PTSD to philosophies of translational research to community engagement in crisis research. His networking talents put him in many meetings and discussions, in professional as well as community organizations.
Zeno is an assistant professor in Family & Community Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He currently chairs the Board of Directors of the Heroic Imagination Project, 501(c)3 non-profit organization that teaches people how to take effective action in challenging situations. His doctorate is in Clinical Psychology.
Zeno leads our research in the areas of human behavior and crisis management.