Responding to Uncertainty and Conflict:

10am-4pm

Friday 10 – Saturday 11 October, 2025

Chaplaincy Centre Common Room, 1 Bristo Square

As levels of uncertainty and conflict rise around the world, they ricochet around our University community and land in our nervous systems in ways that feel often overwhelming, exhausting, de-skilling and distressing. The Abundant Academy and Lewis Deep Democracy trainings resource us to respond wisely to these challenges, helping us to grow in self-knowledge and interpersonal awareness, so that we become agile and graceful in how handle ourselves and others. Much of this is deep spiritual work.

Harriet Harris and Francesca Pagni would love to work with University members, to highlight the spiritual reserves of their programmes, before they each leave the University this semester for new posts.

We are offering a two-day programme for transforming how we respond under stress to personal and group challenges, drawing on strong archetypes with spiritual depth, and learning masterful techniques for turning polarising situations into opportunities for social wisdom.

Harriet Harris is a licensed Coach and Trainer with One of Many® the fastest-growing network of women leaders in the UK, and a Licensed Time-To-Think Facilitator. A former Lecturer, she continues to publish academically, and is lead University Chaplain to the University of Edinburgh where she has grown what is widely regarded as the ‘flagship’ Chaplaincy in the UK, and out of which she created Abundant Academy and PGR Spa. She was awarded an MBE in 2017 for Services to Multi-Faith Education and Community Cohesion, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2022 for her innovative work in universities.

Francesca Pagni is a leadership development and organisational culture specialist with over a decade of experience guiding leaders and teams across multi sector contexts to work with difference and tension in order to create healthy culture. Gaining extensive experience working with the NHS throughout the pandemic, she learned ways to support people and groups to create the awareness shifts necessary to make wider cultural change in high-stakes and emotionally charged situations. She is a licensed Lewis Deep Democracy Method Instructor and Facilitator, certified Integral Development Coach (ICF PCC), Integral Development Team Coach, Mediator, and Systemic Coaching and Constellations Practitioner.