Modeling Complexity in the Humanities and Social Sciences

The recent increase in the number of formal institutes and conferences dedicated to complexity theory and its application is evidence that complexity science has arrived and is realizing its potential to cut across almost every academic discipline. Research projects centered on complex adaptive systems in the natural (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) and social sciences (economics, political science, anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc.), along with novel applications in engineering, computer science, robotics, and, more recently, the arts and the humanities (archaeology, art history, history, literature, philosophy, performance art, religion, etc.), have already earned some recognition in the field of complexity science. 

In light of these developments, the Complex Systems Institute (http://www.complexity.uncc.edu) and the Center for Advanced Research in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) will inaugurate an annual conference series, beginning in 2012, dedicated to complexity with particular application to understanding the intricacies of human experience across all domains. The goal of the series is to provide a trans-disciplinary venue for scholars from the humanities and the social sciences, as well as some aspects of the natural sciences (such as neuroscience, pharmacology, etc.). Since matters of life and death pertain to human experience in profound and important ways, the conference hopes to attract representatives from the allied health sciences as well.

The conference series will be dedicated to a particular topic each year. The initial 2012 conference will be based on an Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities (IATDH) sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the UNC Charlotte Complex Systems Institute this past year that was dedicated to computer modeling in the humanities and social sciences. In keeping with the theme of the IATDH, the topic for our first conference will be: Modeling Complexity in the Humanities and Social Sciences.