'Engaging with Social Science' Workshop
One of the most important recommendations from Complexity-NET's landscaping activity, carried out in 2006/7, was that complexity science and complex systems approaches should be developed to address real-world systems, where human factors form an important part of the whole. This philosophy has informed later Complexity-NET activities, notably our transnational call for research proposals, Interdisciplinary Challenges for Complexity Science.

To bring together physical scientists and social scientists, and to begin to enable these interdisciplinary challenges to be met, was the aim of our Engaging with Social Science workshop, which was held in January 2009 in Chantilly, France. The workshop was attended by over 50 distinguished scientists from both physical science and social science backgrounds. Sessions of keynote presentations led by Professor Eugene H Stanley of Boston University and Professor Nigel Glibert of Surrey University set the tone for the workshop.

The event took place over two days, and included not only a full programme of presentations from both physical and social scientists, but also in-depth small-group discussion sessions to consider how scientists from the different disciplinary backgrounds could best work together.