About the Journal
Aims & Objectives of the Journal
The International Journal of Presencing Leadership & Coaching (IJPLC) is an annual peer-reviewed publication dedicated to advancing the global field of presencing research and practice. IJPLC serves as a platform for transformative scholarship that deepens and broadens our understanding of presencing, with a particular focus on leadership, coaching, and related contexts.
Recognizing the foundational contributions of Theory U to the field of presencing, IJPLC seeks to complement and extend this body of work by exploring emerging frontiers. The journal provides a generative space for inquiry into new frameworks, practices, and perspectives, including the Emerging Presencing Approaches identified by Gunnlaugson (2023). This direction encourages a multiplicity of voices and approaches, reflecting the evolving complexity of leadership and coaching challenges in today’s world.
The International Journal of Presencing Leadership & Coaching welcomes a broad spectrum of traditional and progressive research methods, including theoretical and conceptual approaches. The journal embraces interdisciplinary perspectives, inviting contributions from fields such as Contemplative Studies, Adult Learning and Development, Integral Theory, Consciousness Studies, Applied Arts and Creativity, Transpersonal, Somatic and Buddhist Psychology, Phenomenological and Ontological studies, as well as Eastern Philosophy, Process Philosophy, Existentialism, and more.
As an open-source, peer-reviewed, online international journal, IJPLC welcomes submissions that bring forward fresh perspectives, bold ideas, and nuanced approaches to presencing. The journal encourages contributions that push beyond established frameworks that embrace multiplicity, heterogeneity, and innovative paradigms, fostering the evolution of presencing as a trans-disciplinary, wisdom-centered approach relevant to today’s complex challenges.
By providing a generative space for inquiry, IJPLC aims to restore and amplify a broader vision for presencing—one that transcends institutional affiliations and boundaries, cultivating profound insight, and meaningfully contributing to leadership, coaching, and beyond. As such, IJPLC invites researchers, practitioners, and thought leaders to contribute to this evolving field and shape its future trajectory.
Background
Presencing is increasingly being recognized as a trans-traditional wisdom practice—a generative way of engaging awareness, relational attunement, and transformative insight across diverse domains of human experience. Like mindfulness or meditation, presencing arises from deep cultural, philosophical, and contemplative roots. Its lineage spans Eastern meditative disciplines, Indigenous knowledge systems, embodied phenomenology, and early Western philosophical inquiry.
In the early 2000s, the work of Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, Otto Scharmer, and colleagues brought the term “presencing” into wider usage through their book Presence, and later through the Theory U framework. Their contribution introduced a novel articulation of presencing as a method for sensing and shaping emergent futures within leadership, education, and change work. This gave rise to a global community of practitioners engaging with presencing through awareness-based systems transformation.
Parallel to these developments, Francisco Varela’s phenomenological method, which partly inspired the creation of Theory U, Joseph Jaworski’s storied journey of Source as an inner path of knowledge creation, and more recently Gunnlaugson’s Dynamic Presencing have expanded the way in which presencing engages the deep interior dimensions of practice. Despite notable developments, the foundational terrain of presencing remains only partially explored—still relatively under-researched and under-theorized, with significant room for deeper articulation and evolving inquiry. As global interest in presencing continues to grow, IJPLC remains committed to empowering practitioners, researchers, and thought leaders to explore presencing’s deeper potential in addressing and stewarding the complex challenges of our time.
IJPLC envisions a future where presencing is held in the commons and more widely recognized as an innate human capacity—shared openly and enacted across cultural, professional, and societal contexts. Through its commitment to fostering inquiry, collaboration, and exploration, the journal seeks to deepen and diversify how presencing is understood and developed across an expanding landscape of disciplines and communities of practice. As presencing continues to grow within--and beyond--its contemporary formulations and frameworks, IJPLC supports its emergence both as a trans-traditional expression of timeless human wisdom and as a generative, still-unfolding process-method for cultivating wisdom-based leadership, coaching and transformative practice.
