Global Challenges to Social Inquiry: Presentation for the Inaugural Interdisciplinary PGR Conference

I would like to thank Vanessa Kind (Deputy Head of Faculty, Durham University) and the organising committee for the opportunity to present at the 2019 Inaugural Interdisciplinary PGR Conference.

The purpose of this blog post is to provide attendees (and anyone else interested) a PDF version of my presentation, along with links to several of the pieces of information I discussed in my Plenary.

The Challenge of Global Complexity and Big Data for Social Inquiry

We live, today, in a globally saturated world of endless data and complexity, such that most of the major social problems we presently face are deeply intertwined -- both in terms of the issues themselves and the data we use to make sense of them. The result, as many have called it, is a theoretical and methodological crisis in social inquiry.  How, then, are the social sciences to deal with this crisis? One key way is to develop a 'complex systems' view of the world, grounded in the latest developments in the computational and complexity sciences – or what scholars call making the 'complexity turn.' The purpose of Professor Castellani’s lecture is to quickly overview this turn (both inside and outside academia) and its utility for addressing the global challenges of social inquiry.


PDF OF MY PRESENTATION










  
MAP OF THE COMPLEXITY SCIENCES

COMPLEX-IT SOFTWARE PACKAGE FOR RUNNING COMPUTATIONAL MODELLING

COMPLEX NETWORK VIDEO OF

The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years

Sociology and Complexity Science: A New Field of Inquiry