Emergence: Growth and Organization from Humans to Societies

Session Details

13 June 2026 · BST 2:00 PM / BJT 9:00 PM / EST 9:00 AM · Zoom: 291 827 3884 · Passcode: 123

What We will Cover

1. A 30-minute presentation

Scientists and theorists have long compared the dynamics of social systems to multi-level environments, such as those studied in ecology. In this presentation, I show how we can realize this relationship as interpretable theory, allowing us to a) understand human behavior in terms of our environmental contexts and b) extend this thinking to study social and urban change across levels of human organization. By studying growth as a statistical measure of local dynamics, we can gain a better understanding of development across human contexts.

2. A roundtable discussion on academic paths and life choices

Moving from physics to social science, why complex systems matter, and how to navigate interdisciplinary research in practice.

Speaker Information

Presenter: Jordan Kemp, PhD

Santa Fe Institute

Jordan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Santa Fe Institute. He applies concepts from physics and population ecology to study the relationship between human and urban dynamics and growth. He has a bachelors and PhD in physics.

Moderator: Yuqi Liang

PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology and Institute for New Economic Thinking, University of Oxford

Yuqi Liang is a PhD candidate in computational social sciences at the Department of Sociology, and the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on developing methodologies in quantitative and computational social science, and applying them in life course and inequality studies. She develops two Python packages, Sequenzo for sequence analysis, and GLM Plus for extended generalized linear models.