Mariana Funes

BA MSc PhD FRSA CPsychol

I am an experienced cognitive coach and chartered research psychologist with a background in artificial intelligence research and business psychology.

I teach in higher education with a focus on self-managed learning pedagogies. I have been facilitating self-managed learning sets for over 20 years. As a business psychologist I coach individuals and top teams through transition and post-conventional thinking.

The skilful use of technology is a foundational element in my approach. I see the development of an intentional relationship with technology and quality dialogue skills as essential for collaborative teamwork. I also run a remote coaching and teaching practice that enables me to work flexibly and cost effectively with busy clients and students.

"We share all the roads and we finally see that none of them matters. We see the meaning of all the roads, and therefore we come to ‘no road’. Underneath, all the roads are the same because of the very fact that they are ‘roads’ – they are rigid” --David Bohm

Work

What I Do

A practitioner's practitioner: able, insightful and effective

I teach

I live life as inquiry and do my best to embody this metacognitive skill in my teaching. I learn openly online, and use this visible learning in my teaching to enact what I describe to my students about the process of learning with its magic, risks and vulnerabilities. As adjunct professor on an MA in Mindfulness Studies since 2015, my focus is on Mindful Communication through Insight Dialogue and other dialogical approaches to communication such as Bohmian an Freirean Dialogue.
I coach

The ethos of my work values the integrity of the individual and holds deep trust in the transforming nature of present moment awareness – body, speech, and mind. I work with my clients under the assumption that the coaching relationship is a joint praxis. My aim as a coach is not to change the client’s experience, but to help him or her to sense how they relate to that experience; I believe this makes it possible to move through life with greater creativity and flexibility.
I write

I have a passion for writing as a craft. I see beauty in a well crafted sentence even in boring academic writing! I write papers and books as a researcher, I write articles and blog posts as a teacher, and I write reflections as a learner. In my writing, I note what is not being said in a group or in a domain and write to bring that out in the open; challenging conventional wisdom and always writing from the ‘wrong side’. I critique what I love as a discipline of thinking.

What Clients Say

Mariana is a practitioner's practitioner: able, insightful and effective.

Mariana has been a successful resource with her creative thinking around leadership and management which has positively changed many of their lives.

Mariana is highly insightful and works with others to help them understand different perspectives.

Mariana has an exceptional knowledge of the field and she freely and generously shares this with others, in the true spirit of learning.

Mariana is a highly professional consultant who always manages to combine high energy, insight, challenge and fun in her interventions with others, be they colleagues or clients.

Mariana has a strong ability to listen, stand back from detail and ask questions that take the individual to the core of their issue.

Words from one client

Books and Articles

Writing

Challenging conventional wisdom - always writing from the ‘wrong’ side.

LinkOn Amazon

Lived Time

"Lived Time" is a holistic guide to time management, providing a series of techniques to improve our understanding and control of time throughout our daily lives. The book is designed to re-educate the reader's sense of time to enable them to achieve the work-life balance they strive for.

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LinkOn Amazon

Laughing Matters

Everyone knows intuitively that laughter is good for us. 'Laughing Matters' is for anyone who wants to have more laughter in his or her life. It makes us rethink our attitude to laughter as a fundamental human response, and it provides practical experiments and strategies to help us laugh more.

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LinkOn Amazon

Honing Knowledge Skills

Technology and organizational structures are transforming the workplace, but management skills have not yet caught up. Honing Your Knowledge Skills looks at how to define knowledge working and identifies the practical skills of knowledge management needed by line managers.

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Published Papers

Mackness, Jenny, Frances Bell, and Mariana Funes. "The rhizome: a problematic metaphor for teaching and learning in a MOOC." Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 32.1 (2015): 78-91.

Bell, Frances, Jenny Mackness, and Mariana Funes. "Participant association and emergent curriculum in a MOOC: can the community be the curriculum?." Research in Learning Technology 24 (2016).

Lockridge, R., Levine A. and Funes, M. ‘A DS106 Thing Happened on the Way to the 3M Tech Forum’ To be presented at OER14: building communities of open practice, April 2014.

Dowlen, A., Funes M., and Smith A. ‘Are we getting it right? Critically reflecting on our set adviser practice.’ Action Learning: Research and practice, 2008.

Funes, M. and Darling P. ‘No Brag, Just Facts’ Creating the business case for People and Organisational development at Morgan Stanley, Organisations and People, 2008.

Funes, M. Bridging: ‘The Essence of Creativity’. In Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Creativity and Innovation. Eds: Jon Buijs, Remko van der Lugt, Han van der Meer, 2003.

You can find a full bibliography and papers to download on my account at Mendeley.