Talk:Merrelyn Emery

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This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest was declined. it appears that the revision was withdrawn

The following Wikipedia contributor has declared a personal or professional connection to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view. Thjortel (talk · contribs) This user has declared a connection. (Personal correspondence with the subject)

I would like to propose a substantially expanded version of this article. The full proposed text is in my sandbox at User:Thjortel/Merrelyn Emery draft for review. Summary of the changes:

Added

• {{Infobox scientist}} populated only with verifiable facts.
• New Early life and education section, including the subject's birthplace (Broken Hill, NSW), childhood at Menindee on the Darling River, and the full sequence of degrees (1960 BA Psychology UNE, 1964 BA Hons I Psychology UNE, 1986 PhD Marketing UNSW). Sourced primarily to de Guerre & Deering (2016), supplemented by the subject's CV per WP:BLPSELFPUB for uncontroversial biographical facts.
• New Career section with the full ANU Centre for Continuing Education chronology (tutor and research assistant 1970–76, lecturer 1976–97), preceded by earlier teaching and demonstrator positions.
• Brief Personal life section describing the partnership and marriage with Fred Emery, sourced to Bawden's Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on Fred Emery.
• The 2014 W. Ross Ashby Memorial Lecture at EMCSR (Vienna), sourced to the conference organiser.
• Four additional published books with full bibliographic data: A Choice of Futures (Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), The Search Conference with R. E. Purser (Jossey-Bass, 1996), Educational Futures edited with O. N. Baburoğlu (Sabanci University Press, 2000), and Future of Schools (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2006).

Corrected

• Doctoral field: the current article does not explicitly name the field, but the subject's own CV gives the formal degree as PhD in Marketing (UNSW, 1986); the topic of the dissertation — neurophysiological effects of television viewing — is described in de Guerre & Deering (2016).
• The 1960 BA degree was missing from the previous version.

Removed / trimmed

• Two paragraphs paraphrasing the subject's own framing of OST, which were sourced largely to the subject's own website and to a podcast interview. Per WP:BLPSPS and WP:NPOV, these are not appropriate sources for substantive biographical material. Replaced with a shorter, neutrally phrased Research section sourced to third-party academic literature (de Guerre & Deering 2016; Babüroğlu 1992).
• The direct quotation "innately social animals…" sourced to a podcast.

Sources introduced

• de Guerre, D. W. & Deering, P. (2016). A Practical, Contextual Social Science to Engage the World — Merrelyn Emery and Open Systems Theory. (Third-party academic chapter; primary biographical source for the subject in the published literature.)
• Bawden, R. Frederick Edmund (Fred) Emery — Australian Dictionary of Biography. (Peer-reviewed.)
• Babüroğlu, O. N. (1992). "Tracking the development of the Emery–Trist Systems Paradigm." Systems Practice 5(3): 263–290. doi:10.1007/BF01059830
• Emery, M. (1999). Searching: The theory and practice of making cultural change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (For her own published work.)
• Emery, M. (CV, hosted by Amerin Pty Ltd) — used only for uncontroversial biographical facts (birth date, education, employment dates) per WP:BLPSELFPUB exception 1. Not used to source any contestable claim.

Self-published items retained

• Did 9/11 change the world? (2021) and An Open Systems Science (2026) are listed in Selected publications with the self-published status flagged. The 2026 work is supported by an independent third-party mention at the Systems Community of Inquiry. If reviewers consider these unsuitable under WP:NBOOK, they could reasonably be moved to External links.

Conflict of interest disclosure I have a personal connection to the subject through professional correspondence and am therefore proposing changes here rather than editing the article directly, in line with WP:COI. I would appreciate review by an independent editor.

I am happy to break this into smaller individual proposals if a single bundled review is impractical.

Trond Hjorteland (talk) 12:32, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Retracted in its current form, mostly due to the current COI (did not have that when that article was originally written). I will leave it to others to do any major adjustments like those proposed here, and will myself only fix factual errors going forward. Trond Hjorteland (talk) 07:01, 8 August 2026 (UTC)