BIO Jean Boulton

Jean Boulton is a theoretical physicist and complexity scientist whose academic background includes Oxford University and the University of Cambridge, where she specialized in quantum physics. After further academic study and diverse professional experience, she expanded her work into engineering, strategy, and organisational consultancy, combining analytical insight with hands-on management.

Since the mid-1990s, Jean has been deeply engaged with the science and philosophy of complexity. These ideas continue to inform both her research and her practice, shaping her understanding of how systems evolve, adapt, and transform. She teaches worldwide across postgraduate programmes in international development, systemic change, engineering, holistic science, sustainability, management, and community engagement.

A Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Jean is also a visiting academic with the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath and at Cranfield School of Management. In 2019, she was a research fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.

Her writing and teaching invite people to move beyond linear thinking to see life as dynamic, interconnected, and alive with possibility. Jean’s books, Embracing Complexity (Oxford University Press, 2015) and The Dao of Complexity, explore how uncertainty and emergence are not problems to solve, but vital aspects of how the universe unfolds. Through her work, she encourages individuals and organizations to act with awareness, compassion, and foresight, fostering adaptive, sustainable, and humane futures.