“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.”

Photo ©Dennis Finnen.

Mary Catherine Bateson is a writer and cultural anthropologist who divides her time between New Hampshire and Massachusetts where she recently completed three years as a Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has written and co-authored many books and articles, lectures across the country and abroad, and is president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies in New York City. Until recently she has been the Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English at George Mason University, and is now Professor Emerita. Since the Fall of 2006 she has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston College and is a special consultant to the Lifelong Access Libraries Initiative of the Americans for Libraries Council, with an emphasis on conceptualization, testing and implementation of her Active Wisdom model for community dialogues as a signature program of the Initiative.

During the past few years Mary Catherine Bateson has completed three projects: her most recent book, Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery; the 2004 Gregory Bateson Centennial (as well as wrapping up a few loose ends from the 2001 Mead Centennial) which, even after its official period passed, continues to stimulate activity and interest; and building on the experience with Granny Voters as a means to encourage trustee voting in future electoral seasons and to empower older adults to claim a voice for the future. This project has developed into a further exploration of intergenerational communication and changing ways of experiencing time and will probably lead to a book with the tentative title Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom to be published by Knopf on the contributions and improvisations of engaged older adults.

Mary Catherine Bateson is currently writing a regular column, "Peripheral Vision" for Pink Magazine and serving as a consultant for Wondertime, a magazine on early childhood.