Bringing a Complex Systems Approach to WHO Europe Health Workforce Planning (A Two-Day WHO Collaborative)

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 learning partnership based on shared challenges, adaptive learning and comparative exchange – something that sits at the forefront of all my current work, namely, we need not only international engagement, but also collaboration to learn from each other!

 

Bringing together participants from different systems and contexts creates an important space not simply to compare workforce challenges, but to collectively explore how health systems might build greater adaptive capacity under conditions of growing complexity and uncertainty.

 

The shared challenge we explored was: how do health workforce planning systems remain adaptive, resilient and sustainable under growing multiple pressures?

 

To facilitate the discussions, I was charged with bringing in a complex systems perspective, including participatory systems mapping and a systems approach to theory of change.

What emerged was striking. Despite major differences in health systems and governance structures, many countries are wrestling with similar dynamics: workforce shortages, burnout, fragmented governance, fiscal constraints, uneven regional capacity, data fragmentation and increasing service complexity. At the same time, countries are experimenting with new approaches centred on prevention, collaborative care, learning systems, digital infrastructure, workforce redesign and adaptive planning.

 

One of the most interesting parts of the workshop was moving beyond simply describing problems and instead asking a more difficult question: what actually helps systems adapt under complex conditions? To support this discussion, we developed a working, complexity-informed theory of change and then used participatory systems mapping to collaboratively explore the interacting pressures, feedback loops, leverage points and adaptive capacities shaping workforce planning across contexts.

 

Perhaps the clearest lesson from the discussions is that no country is solving these challenges through single interventions or simple technical fixes. Workforce planning increasingly looks less like a forecasting exercise and more like the governance of a complex adaptive system—one that depends on learning, coordination, institutional memory, trust and the ability to adapt under uncertainty.

 

Unravelling the Complexities of Policy, From Models to Actionable Decision-Making -- A Keynote for Polder and IAS, University of Amsterdam

 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, and decision-support systems, particularly under conditions of uncertainty, competing values, and institutional complexity. Discussions throughout the session focused on methodological innovation, participatory modelling, governance learning, the value of the social sciences and humanities and the future role of the complexity sciences in helping societies navigate increasingly complex societal challenges. 

 

MY KEYNOTE:

Three provocations: 

• ‘The challenge is no longer simply producing more sophisticated models or more data. The challenge is learning how to unravel systems of reasoning, governance, participation, and decision-making in ways that open new possibilities for collective learning and action.’  
• ‘Complex societal challenges unfold differently across places because systems become configured differently over time, requiring more place-based, participatory, and adaptive forms of governance, modelling, and decision support.’
• ‘If we are serious about addressing the complex challenges societies face, we need to fundamentally rethink how we educate future generations — training people to think across disciplines, reason in systems terms, engage uncertainty, understand computational methods, and work within more methodologically pluralistic forms of inquiry and decision-making.’

Abstract of Keynote: 

My keynote focused on why we need the complexity sciences, drawing less on abstract theory and more on years of mistakes, failures, institutional frustrations, partial successes, and small hard-won insights gained through working across real-world policy, governance, and decision-support systems. 

A major focus of the talk was the growing mismatch between the complexity of contemporary societal challenges and the increasingly narrow forms of reasoning often used to address them. 

The presentation argued for more place-based, participatory, configurational, and adaptive approaches to governance and decision-making; stronger engagement with issues of power, inequality, and institutional asymmetry; and greater methodological pluralism across qualitative, computational, participatory, statistical, and systems-based approaches.

Another major theme was the importance of moving beyond the idea that models alone can solve complex societal problems. Models and methods are only one part of broader governance and decision-making systems. The future challenge is developing more socially usable forms of complexity-informed reasoning that can better connect researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and communities, while also rethinking how we educate future generations to work within increasingly complex and unfinished worlds. 

One example would be models that unravel the complexity of a problem, such as healthy eating or workforce resilience or just transitions -- rather than try to find solutions -- in order to help people understand why the system is so difficult to change, giving new insights then into what sorts of change is possible and the models that would help to drive that change. 

 

LINKS
 

CLICK HERE for a PDF of my presentation 
 

Here is a link to the paperback version of The Atlas of Social Complexity Discount Code TASC15, and it offers a 15% discount.

 

Here is a link to the map of the complexity sciences  

 
Here is a link to COMPLEX-IT, the online R-Studio platform allowing non-experts in computational modelling access to these tools, all through a social complexity framework.

 

 

 

 

How can scholars harness visual arts, media, and methods? A DRMC Visual Methods and Media Panel

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 Handelman-Smith (Director, Into the Light), and Brian Castellani (Director, Durham Research Methods Centre, Durham University).

 

Several themes emerged across the discussion. One was the growing recognition that visual methods are no longer peripheral to research. They are becoming increasingly central to how scholars immerse themselves in topics, organise knowledge, analyse complex systems, and communicate ideas to wider audiences.

 

Another theme was the importance of community engagement and the role the arts can play in both research and community wellbeing. The panel explored how visual and creative practices can help build dialogue, support participation, create shared spaces for reflection, and connect academic work more directly to lived experience and local communities.

The discussion also explored how visual materials can function as data, how diagrams and images can shape conceptual thinking, and how visual outputs themselves can become legitimate forms of research dissemination. Questions from the audience extended these conversations into issues of ethics, exhibition, interdisciplinarity, software, and public communication.

 

A further theme was the growing importance of visual literacy within contemporary scholarship. Researchers increasingly work in environments shaped by images, interfaces, maps, dashboards, networks, and digital media, yet many still receive little formal training in how to critically engage visual forms as part of their methodological toolkit.

 

The event formed part of the DRMC’s wider commitment to creating spaces where scholars can experiment with methods, media, and new ways of thinking about research across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

 

 

 

USEFUL LINKS

 

INTO THE LIGHT (COUNTY DURHAM) – Julia Handelman-Smith  

 

NAWAL WATALI’S PHOTOJOURNALISM WEBSITE

 

ART AND SCIENCE FACTORY Visual Complexity Art – Brian Castellani

 

HISTORICAL ECONOMIC DATA VISUALIZATION – Laura Channing

·      https://www.aehnetwork.org/

·      https://chartle.cc/

 

WORKING WITH PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVES – Vivian Myron

·      PHRC – Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University

https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/

·      Edwards, Elizabeth, and Janice Hart. Photographs, Objects, Histories: On the Materiality of Images. Taylor & Francis Group, 2004.

·      Langford, Martha. Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums. Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8a1UBV1RWFkC.

·      Gil Pasternak. The Handbook of Photography Studies. 1st ed. Edited by Gil Pasternak. Routledge, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003103974.