Nanda Wijermans. Photo: Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Nanda Wijermans is employed as a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University. She is also a new associate professor at DSV.

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About the seminar

Understanding (collective) human behaviour and decision-making is of vital importance for both science and society at large. Computational models, especially those with heterogeneous agents situated in specific environments (agent-based models or ABMs), are powerful tools for analysing, assessing, understanding, and governing collective human behaviours such as crowd behaviour, group dynamics, collective action in natural resource use, etc.

However, many computational models lack (adequate) representation of human behaviour dynamics. This calls both for advancing fundamental theories and empirical grounding as the crucial building blocks in supporting policy practice, appropriate for these times of high uncertainty and complex social and environmental dynamics.

In this seminar, Nanda Wijermans will illustrate her contribution to advancing our understanding of human (group) behaviour and decision-making through the development of agent-based social simulation, e.g. for modelling crowd behaviour. Since her research is interdisciplinary at its core, she will in detail describe how she integrates theories and qualitative and quantitative empirical insights in her ABMs to reflect complex social realities, e.g. by combining behavioural experiments with ABM to study why and how of collective action of sustainable resource use.

Finally, Nanda Wijermans will present an outlook of future research that contributes to a plurality of (theory and empirical) social science-grounded models, e.g. formalising the social identity approach applied to the necessity to collectively transform our behaviour in light of the climate crisis.

Would you like the Zoom link, or do you have other questions? Send an e-mail to Harko Verhagen: verhagen@dsv.su.se