Complexity Science Hub

23/07/2025

🎙️ Spotlight On: Ola Ali

Welcome back to our interview series with a twist—where researchers pick the questions they want to answer!

In this edition, you’ll meet Ola Ali, a PhD candidate researching at the Complexity Science Hub. She talks about tracing invisible borders, how science can change lives—and why patience is key when tackling complex problems.

🌍 Why migration research? Because it can directly impact real lives.
🎧 Favorite pastimes? Collecting vinyl records & exploring Vienna’s museums.

👉 Read the full interview: https://csh.ac.at/news/spotlight-on-ola-ali/

23/07/2025

What do the want from us?
And what role do and play in shaping human ?

📘 The Seshat History of Moralizing Religion (Beresta Books, July 2025) takes readers on a sweeping journey from ancient Egypt to Hindu kingdoms, Indigenous America, and West Africa—exploring how diverse societies connected moral behavior to supernatural reward and punishment.

The draws on over a decade of data from the Seshat: Global History Databank and reveals the surprising diversity—and common patterns—in how human cultures developed religious ideas about justice, morality, and the afterlife.

“This book is a novel contribution to our understanding of religion,” says CSH scientist Jenny Reddish. “This is a large-scale comparative project marshalling evidence for religious change in historical context across a wide range of societies from the Neolithic to the present day,” adds Reddish, one of the editors along with Peter Turchin and Jennifer Larson.

“The real surprise came in the details—how different societies developed unique ideas about moralizing supernatural punishment and reward. From ancient Egypt’s concept of ma’at to the Indo-European traditions, Hawaiian state gods, and Aztec beliefs about the afterlife for warriors, the diversity is fascinating. Even systems like karma, which don’t involve gods at all, challenge how we think about morality and the supernatural,” points out Turchin, who leads the Complexity Science Hub’s (CSH) research group on Social Complexity and Collapse.

🔗 Learn more & read about the book: https://bit.ly/4m9obtp

22/07/2025

🚔 has a rhythm — can we decode its beat? Understanding when and where crime happens is key to smarter . In a new study co-authored by Rafael Prieto-Curiel from the Complexity Science Hub, 12 years of detailed crime data from Ghent, 🇧🇪 Belgium, reveal relatively stable temporal “heartbeats” for different crime types over time.

➡️ What was done? ⬅️
The research team — including Robin Khalfa, Thom Snaphaan, and Wim Hardyns from Ghent University Global Campus — analyzed five crime types (aggressive theft, residential burglary, assault, bicycle theft, and car theft) at a fine-grained 200x200 meter scale from 2007 to 2018.

➡️ Their findings: ⬅️
💓 Crime follows temporal rhythms — stable “heartbeats” that vary by crime type and location.
📍 Different crime “hotspots” within the city show unique temporal crime signatures, highlighting the need for microgeographic analysis
☀️ Crime patterns align with daily human routines — obligatory activities like work or school influence property crimes, while discretionary leisure activities impact violent crimes, especially on weekend nights ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Some examples:
🚲 Bicycle theft & residential burglary peak at night and midday during weekdays
🚗 Car theft intensifies mostly at night
👊 Assaults and aggressive theft spike on weekend nights, linked to leisure activities

➡️ The relevance? ⬅️
This study reveals how understanding when and where crime happens can help tailor smarter, more precise prevention strategies. It also highlights the power of combining time and space analysis — a key approach championed at the Complexity Science Hub.

👉 Read the full study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0961463X251358586

17/07/2025

🎨📊 We’re hiring a Specialist!

Are you passionate about turning complex data into clear, engaging visuals? Do you enjoy collaborating with scientists and communicators to bring insights to life?

Then you might be the perfect fit for our Visuals team at the Complexity Science Hub!

You'll be working alongside award-winning visualization expert Liuhuaying Yang—recipient of the Visualization is Beautiful award 2025 and the World Dataviz Prize 2023. 🏆

At CSH, no two days are the same. From supply chains and epidemiology to migration, mobility, and crime—you’ll dive into fascinating data from many fields and help make the invisible visible.

👉 Interested? Apply now: https://csh.ac.at/engage/jobs/
👉 Explore our visualizations: https://csh.ac.at/visuals/

16/07/2025

💬💡Explaining your research to kids? 🤔 Easier said than done — but absolutely essential. Because the earlier children understand how science works 🧠🔬, the better equipped they’ll be to make sense of the world around them.

That’s exactly what the project by the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften ( ) is all about: making complex science accessible for young minds.

👨‍🔬 Markus Hofer, PhD candidate at the Complexity Science Hub and the Medizinische Universität Wien, took on the challenge. He explains what friendships 💞 have to do with physics ⚛️: how people’s behavior in groups can be predicted in ways similar to particles in a magnet 🧲.
His research helps us understand why social media 📱 sometimes divides us more than it connects us — and how we can change that 🤝.

🎥 But – no need for more words, the video says it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weYskaMWvK0

More about FÄKT: https://www.faekt.science/
More about Markus Hofer: https://csh.ac.at/markus-hofer/
🖼️ FÄKT

16/07/2025

Aashima Dogra-Freitag is usually the one asking questions and listening to stories — but yesterday, it was her turn to share.

Aashima, our Maria Leptin | EMBO Science Journalism Fellow at CSH this summer, talked about her career as a science writer and editor. Over the past decade in India, she has told bold, inclusive stories — especially those of women scientists — through articles, podcasts, comics, and videos as co-founder of TheLifeofScience.com (https://bit.ly/46MtE4J). Her work challenges rigid structures in science and promotes democratic values and inclusivity.

Now at CSH, she’s exploring the world of complexity science, conducting interviews with our researchers — 15 so far! She’s been struck by thought-provoking insights like: “The subject matter of complexity science is emergence”, or “We are atoms in a spin.”

Through these conversations--and stories to come--, Aashima hopes to reaffirm the power of science writing — not just to inform, but to connect science with society.

We're thrilled to have her voice and vision at CSH this summer!

14/07/2025

It's about , , and a touch of flair 🇮🇹

What began with CSH’s Visiting Students Program grew into a thriving scientific partnership: Giordano De Marzo and Emanuele Calò joined CSH to work with faculty member Vito DP Servedio. United by their passion and enthusiasm for , an appreciation for good conversation, and a shared appetite for cooking up research with flair, the Italian trio began working together.

With Vito’s mentorship, Giordano and Emanuele not only designed and executed their research projects, but also became an active part of CSH’s intellectual and social life. Now, they just published a study in Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, introducing a novel analytical method to map and measure species’ ecological roles and vulnerabilities.

"This is actually our second paper together", Vito shares. “It's a great example of how our Program fosters meaningful collaborations. It's wonderful to see how these ongoing collaborations continue to produce high-impact research.”

Their method borrows from economic complexity theory—typically used to understand trade networks—to reveal which species are keystone (those whose loss risks triggering wider coextinctions), and which are quietly at risk of collapse.

“When you mention using economic tools to study , people often raise their eyebrows: these seem entirely unrelated. But that's precisely what makes complex systems science so powerful,” Vito says.

Data from six real-world (including Florida Bay and the Coachella desert) were used by the Italian trio to map species' ecological roles and vulnerabilities with remarkable clarity.

As ecosystems worldwide face increased pressures due to climate change and overexploitation, this tool could help conservationists prioritize protection efforts more effectively in different parts of the world.

Bravo, Vito, Emanuele, and Giordano– and Carrie Cowan, on leading a fantastic Visiting Students Program! We are looking forward to the next paper!

👉 Find out more about the study: https://bit.ly/3GFJJia

10/07/2025

👩‍🔬💬 know it's happening—even if they’re not doing it themselves. Large Language Models ( ) like are quietly transforming how researchers write papers, draft grant proposals, and process data.

CSH researcher Lisette Espín-Noboa has been following this shift with growing interest. “I kept reading about it, talking about it with colleagues,” she said. “That’s when I thought: why not organize a workshop to openly discuss how LLMs are being used in ?”

Together with Ruggero Marino Lazzaroni and João Neto from the University of Graz, she organized a 3-day workshop at the Complexity Science Hub—not just to show what LLMs can do, but to spotlight how to use them responsibly.

They discussed using ethically in academic writing, using LLMs as assistants for data collection and preprocessing, and automating research workflows and coding support. The workshop wrapped with a hands-on simulation: using an LLM to annotate social media data, analyze it, and draft a paper section—putting theory into practice.

08/07/2025

🧍↔️🧍‍♀️ Is society really more divided — or does it just feel that way?

A new study in PNAS Nexus by researcher Peter Steiglechner from the Complexity Science Hub – together with colleagues Ago Merico and Paul Smaldino from the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) GmbH and UC Merced – introduces a novel method to distinguish actual societal polarization from perceived polarization of opinions.

👉 Key finding: The more agreement we see within our own social circle, the more polarized society can appear to us — even if the actual differences across society haven’t changed and even if other people do not see the same polarization.

💡 A metaphor to explain the idea:
We all view political opinions through a kind of lens — shaped by the range of views in our immediate environment.
➡️ If opinions around us are diverse, the “lens” is wide — and society feels less divided.
➡️ If there’s strong agreement in our circles, the lens narrows — and we perceive society as more polarized.

🔬 What’s new about the method?
The team developed a mathematical approach to isolate how much of the perceived polarization stems from the observer’s own environment. By analyzing opinion distributions within identity groups over time, they show how subjective and heterogeneous contexts can distort perceptions of societal division — independently of real-world opinion divergence.

🌍 Example: Climate change
The authors applied this method to climate change opinions in Germany, showing that perceptions of polarization on this issue can easily deviate substantially between political groups.

🗣️ “The perception of polarization matters,” says lead author Peter Steiglechner from CSH. “It influences policymaking and how we address major challenges like climate change, food security, or environmental protection. Reducing polarization starts with understanding our perceptions — and that’s what our study reveals.”

👉 Read the full story here: https://csh.ac.at/news/opinions-within-inner-circles-influence-perception-of-social-division/

07/07/2025

Vienna’s housing market: The pandemic has triggered a lasting shift in preferences, shows a new study.

🏘️ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞:
The team around Fabian Braesemann (Associate Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub and Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford) analyzed more than 120,000 rental listings on "Willhaben" from 2018 and 2022.

💡 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬:

➡️ Outer districts boom: Rents rose 50% more in Vienna’s outer districts (10–12, 14–17, 20–23) compared to the central ones.

➡️ Pre-pandemic price drivers like a central location or proximity to subway stations have lost relative importance.

➡️ Home-office-ready apartments are in demand: Features like extra rooms, balconies, and gardens have become more important.

➡️ Strongest increase in rents was seen in districts 10, 11, 15, 20, 21, and 23—areas that were relatively less expensive before the pandemic. By contrast, the increase was smaller in the already more expensive districts 13, 18, and 19.

🏗️ 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫?
Changing housing preferences have long-term consequences for urban planning. For instance, if more people choose to live in outer districts and work remotely, their mobility and shopping patterns will shift accordingly. Cities need to anticipate and respond to these new patterns.

🔬 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐰?
Housing markets are shaped by countless interactions: renters, landlords, infrastructure, policies, and economic trends. To navigate this complexity, we need data-driven insights.

As Fabian Braesemann puts it:
“If we can use algorithms to extract evolving housing preferences from rental data, we can begin to rethink urban planning—shifting from reactive policies toward active management of the housing market as a complex system.”

This study was published in and was conducted in collaboration with Einstein Center Digital Future, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Agenda Austria, Hanno Lorenz, and Jan Kluge.

Read more:

What makes an apartment attractive when the daily commute to the office disappears? A new study with CSH reveals a clear trend in housing

04/07/2025

🚶‍♂️🚲 How can cities move toward truly sustainable mobility?
At the 14th World Cities Summit Mayors Forum in Vienna’s Rathaus, CSH researcher Rafael Prieto-Curiel presented his work on sustainable .

Speaking to 100+ city leaders from more than 50 cities, he emphasized the need to go beyond cars – and optimize every aspect of alternative transport, from traffic light coordination to city-wide walkability.

💡 He highlighted that , , and remain the most promising pathways toward truly sustainable urban mobility.

More info about the event: https://www.wien.gv.at/kontakt/mayor-forum-world-cities-summit
More info about Urban Sustainability research at CSH: https://csh.ac.at/research/research-topic/urban-sustainability/

04/07/2025

🔥 No summer slowdown at CSH – this week, we hosted three exciting workshops. After recent events on migration, we turned our focus to and .

👥 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐀𝐝𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (organized by Mirta Galesic & Henrik Olsson):

– 🤖 Augmenting Intelligence through Collective Learning: How can AI & tech help groups learn better together – despite rising misinformation, polarization & fragmentation?

– 🔄 Adapting in Uncertain Times: How do collectives tackle change, diverging beliefs & social challenges? What role do networks & learning strategies play?

Experts from psychology, cognitive science, political science, computer science, physics & complexity science joined to explore new ideas and future collaborations.

🚶‍♀️🚲 𝐌𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 (led by Daniel Kondor, Daniela Meier, Rafael Prieto-Curiel & Vito D. P. Servedio):

– 🛣️ Rethinking Mobility: This one-day workshop brought together researchers and practitioners to rethink how we study and shape urban mobility. From data gaps and measurement challenges to emerging research questions – the goal was clear: connect science with real-world needs and move toward more sustainable, evidence-based mobility solutions.

💡Big questions + hands-on problems = real impact.
Find more events at the Complexity Science Hub: https://csh.ac.at/events-news/events/