Don Miller

Don’s 35 years in the Political Science Department at Melbourne University established his career in what could be broadly termed, thinking. He has, and continues to write, plus designs and facilitates workshops on themes like “Rethink Time and Reduce Stress” and “Beyond Commonsense”. He established the Melbourne Centre for Ideas to formalize and extend this work.
http://www.melbournecentreforideas.com.au

Everything he does, as teacher and author, is directed to looking at things with fresh eyes. Don chooses to radically redefine concepts. It is with this in mind that an unexpected meeting of minds and subsequent strategic alliance, to say nothing of the uniqueness of a friendship evolved between Don and Karen Dempster, with her focus of the goals within Creating Change.

Productively ignoring boundaries, Don acts across disciplines of politics, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, social theory and psychoanalysis. He believes that the more one breaches boundaries, the better placed one is to understand the complexity of the human condition. Acknowledging what has been identified by others also, he is acutely aware that creativity is invariably found at the boundaries, at the gaps between existing knowledge and practices.

Don concentrates on the role language, thought, and in particular metaphor play in all human behavior and is concerned with the study of time and the implications for political and other behaviour arising from different perspectives of time. He has highlighted, for example, the notion of ‘timing’, the ‘when’ something happens, including the inevitable and tricky impact of chance.

Expressing his desire to engage others with the concept of ideas generation and the essentiality of discussion, Don writes a regular blog, creates “Reflections” for interactive comment, runs workshops and events and has a newsletter focused on the above passions.