Complex systems consist of lots of components interacting in non-trivial ways, leading to sophisticated and sometimes surprising emergent behaviors: “the whole is more than the sum of the parts”. Some complex systems respond and adapt to changes in their environment.

In this course, you will learn the state-of-the-art thinking about complexity, guided by the world’s leading experts who will come to share their insights with you – on subjects such as ecosystems and evolution, the global climate, stock markets, epidemics, criminal, neural, and social networks. You will learn to apply common tools and methods to study complex systems, even creating some yourself, leading to a better understanding of how complexity thinking can address our world’s most pressing problems.

Coordinator

Prof. Dr. J.L.T.M. Bollen

Timetable

You can find the timetable on Datanose.

Entry requirements

Open to second-year and third-year UvA Bachelor's students and other interested parties, such as contract students or students from other Dutch higher education institutions. Master's students can only participate if there are still spots available.

Registration

UvA Bachelor's students can register from 1 to 8 December 2025 in the GLASS registration rounds. Master’s students can send a short motivation to keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl.

‘Bijvak’ students and contract students can register from 1 December 2025 until two weeks prior to the start of the course, by completing the online registration form.

If you have any trouble while registering, please contact us at keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl.

Please note: as a contract student you can choose to participate either including or excluding assessment. If you choose the latter, you only have access to the seven lectures of the course. If you also wish to attend the seminars, please choose 'including assessment'.

Costs

Prices can be found on the IIS website.

SDGs in education

The IIS strives to reflect current societal issues and challenges in our elective courses, honours modules and degree programmes and attempts to integrate the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in this course. For more information about these goals, please visit the SDGs website.