Much thanks to Dave Snowden and the Cynefin team for inviting me to be one of the Eagles at the Cynefin Exploratory, Balancing Human & AI Reasoning in a Complex World , held at Trinity College Dublin on 1–2 July. The two-day Exploratory was designed to bring together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and organisational leaders to explore the evolving relationship between human reasoning…
I would like to thank Tomas Zapata , Cris Scotter , and their team in the Unit of Health Workforce and Health Services in the WHO Regional Office for Europe (Copenhagen) for the opportunity to engage colleagues from different countries for our two-day event: WHO Europe Health Workforce Planning Collaborative OVERVIEW OF EVENT The collaborative sought to advance an international health workforce…
Many thanks to Mike Lees , Vítor Vasconcelos , the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) , and the POLDER Center for the invitation to speak at today’s 'Unravelling Complexity session at the IAS Festival -- as part of the IAS's week of celebrations for its 10th anniversary. The POLDER event explored how insights from the complexity sciences can be better translated into policy, governance, modelling,…
On 12 May 2026 the DRMC hosted a Visual Methods and Media Panel, appropriately titled, 'How can scholars harness visual arts, media, and methods?' The panel was moderated by Sam Hoyle (History, Durham University) and included Laura Channing (Assistant Professor, History, Durham University), Vivian Myron (History, Durham University), Nawal Watali (Geography, Durham University), Julia…
People ask me why I love traveling to Japan, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands so much. One word: manners! I’m not naïve. I have lived and travelled across far too many countries to know that, given time, the underbelly of any culture will eventually show itself and that no society is perfect. Just read Butter , by Asako Yuzuki ( 柚木 麻子 ) and you get my point. Still, just travel to Japan and…
I would like to thank Anna Matheson and the rest of the team for the opportunity to deliver one of the keynotes at this year’s Capital City Complex Systems Symposium 2026 — 24-25 February 2026, Wellington, New Zealand. ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM The Capital City Complex Systems Symposium 2026 in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington convenes leading thinkers and practitioners to examine how contemporary…
Brits love to walk. It is one of the real pleasures of living here, and something we would never trade for a car-centred life. We walk everywhere—errands, visits, the pub—and a decent walk often doubles as exercise and casual community building. Some people take this further and become ramblers, which tells you something in itself. And yet, while there is a deep affection for walking in the UK,…
Does AI prove the possibility of a personal God? Probably not. But it does undercut several of the mechanical arguments long used to dismiss the idea. AI AND THE MECHANICAL CHALLENGES OF A PERSON GOD Most Christians do not think of God as an abstract force. They mean a personal God: present, listening, responsive, involved—someone you can address, trust, blame, thank, and plead with. There is a…
Undated photo of Jeffrey Epstein, right, speaking to academic and linguist Noam Chomsky. Photograph: House Oversight Democrats/AFP/Getty Images On 3 February 2026 , Ramon Antonio Vargas r eported in The Guardian in an article titled 'Newly released files shed new light on Chomsky and Epstein relationship ' that a tranche of U.S. Justice Department records released under a congressional…
Across countries and at the global level, the social fabric is fraying, and our standard explanations are missing the root of the problem. We keep pointing to leaders, polarisation, or failing institutions, but those accounts stay on the surface. The deeper issue is one of social psychology. I apply a social psychological lens—grounded in a rereading of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents and…
I would like to thank the WHO and NHS for the opportunity to be part of this panel and to present on the value of the complexity sciences for healthcare workforce strengthening. I would like to specifically thank Cris Scotter , ( Unit of Health Workforce and Health Services ) and Danielle Mason and team in Global Health Partnerships, NHS England for the opportunity to present. I would also like to…
We’ve just published a new paper that advances our longer-running programme on inequality, entropy, and structure. The core move is simple but consequential: instead of collapsing inequality into a single number (Gini, Theil, entropy), we show how to locate inequality inside a distribution. Using an entropy-based decomposition, we turn inequality into a multiscale map that identifies which parts…
I would like to thank Patrik Nordin , Ville-Pekka Niskanen, and the rest of my colleagues/ friends at Vaasa University, Finland for the chance to provide the Keynote for this year’s Hallinnon ja kuntatutkimuksen tiedepäivät HKTP 2025 Vaasassa (Administration and Municipal Research Science Days HKTP 2025. OVERVIEW OF MY KEYNOTE Resilience has become a central concept in public administration,…
I would like to thank Patrik Nordin and colleagues at Vaasa University, Finland for the chance to run a pre-conference workshop, based on the Atlas of Social Complexity. The focus of the workshop was, ‘An Invitation to Re-Imaging Public Administration and Policy from a Social Complexity Framework.’ Here is a link to the paperback version of The Atlas of Social Complexity Here is a link to the…
On 17 September 2025, I gave a public lecture at Nelson Mandela University, reflecting on three decades of experimentation in visual complexity — from early assemblages and the OneBigMob cartoon world to entangled portraitures and AI art. The event was hosted through the Chair in Identities and Social Cohesion , Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. Much thanks to Andrea Hurst and Harsheila…
On 17 September 2025 we held our second Social Complexity Retreat, this time at Nelson Mandela University – hosted through the Chair in Identities and Social Cohesion , Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. Much thanks to Andrea Hurst and Harsheila Riga and colleagues for providing the space to do this work. Building on the first retreat at Durham , we gathered a transdisciplinary mix of…
Resilience Reframed: Notes from the JSPS–AMS Policy Workshop In October 2024, I joined a UK–Japan policy workshop hosted by JSPS and the UK Academy of Medical Sciences. The question set before us was: what does it mean to make health systems resilient in the face of converging shocks e.g., climate extremes, pandemics, inequality, technological disruption? As part of the Workshop I presented on the…
On 22 August 2025 I gave a seminar on my art project, Entangled, for the ISCIA Seminar series, which is hosted through the Chair in Identities and Social Cohesion , Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. The ISCIA Horizon 2055 series focused on the role art can play in reimagining and reshaping our futures, with an eye to 2055. Much thanks to Andrea Hurst and Harsheila Riga and colleagues for…
QUICK OVERVIEW AND LINKS TO THE OTHER THEMES AND CHAPTERS IN THE BOOK We come, finally, to the last chapter of the Atlas, and with it, the initial series of blog posts covering the entire book. Here is a summary of those posts and our core themes: The first major content theme in T he Atlas of Social Complexity is Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness. This first theme includes six chapters, which…
QUICK OVERVIEW AND LINKS TO THE OTHER THEMES AND CHAPTERS IN THE BOOK The first major content theme in T he Atlas of Social Complexity is Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness. This first theme includes six chapters, which I have so far blogged on. Chapter 6 addresses autopoiesis. Chapter 7 turns to the role of bacteria in human consciousness. Chapter 8 explores how the immune system, just like…
I am super excited to be part of the writing team for the Royal College of Physicians ’ report, A breath of fresh air: responding to the health challenges of modern air pollution . I would like to thank Professor Sir Stephen Holgate , Dr Suzanne Bartington and Dr Gary Fuller and the core RCP team for the opportunity to contribute to this report. MY SECTION (3.2 OF THE REPORT) WAS ON AIR QUALITY…
On the 12th and 13th of June, the Durham Research Methods Centre (DRMC) held its first Social Complexity Retreat based on The Atlas of Social Complexity . Our hope is that this will be an ongoing event. For those who've not been on an academic retreat, it is not a workshop and is, most certainly, 180 degrees opposite of a conference. RETREATS ARE NOT WORKSHOPS OR CONFERENCES Unlike a conference or…
We would like to thank Péter Érdi for taking the time to conduct a two-part video interview with us about our new book, The Atlas of Social Complexity . For those who do not know Péter, he is is a Hungarian-born computational neuroscientist who now lives in Michigan , United States where he is a Henry R. Luce Professor at Kalamazoo College . [ 1 ] [ 2 ] In his career he wrote several books and…
QUICK OVERVIEW AND LINKS TO THE OTHER THEMES AND CHAPTERS IN THE BOOK The first major content theme in T he Atlas of Social Complexity is Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness. This first theme includes six chapters, which I have so far blogged on. Chapter 6 addresses autopoiesis. Chapter 7 turns to the role of bacteria in human consciousness. Chapter 8 explores how the immune system, just like…
I was recently interviewed by a Sciene Magazine and asked to respond to the following nine questions on the impact of air pollution on mental health and brain health, from early-life to later-life, including dementia. Most of my answers were not used in the interview. So, I thought I would post the Q&A here. For more on the work my colleagues and I do, see our InSPIRE Consortium website . 1. Could…