Embracing Complexity: Principled and Practical Approaches to Emergence

We are pleased to invite you to the Workshop titled "Embracing Complexity: Principled and Practical Approaches to Emergence". The workshop is scheduled for June 23-27 2025 at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC in Spanish) in Palma de Mallorca, Spain (https://ifisc.uib-csic.es/). 

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

This workshop will offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary perspective on the applications of emergence in examining various real-world systems, including its use in understanding high-order interactions and complexity across diverse biological and ecological scales. With an emphasis on the micro-to-macro relations between cells, humans, and ecology, we aim to present emergence both as a practical tool and a principled approach.

The mornings will be devoted to theory-driven presentations that draw from recent operational advances in capturing emergent phenomena, while the afternoons will feature hands-on sessions tailored for practical implementation of these topics. Something we are most thrilled about will be a coordinated outdoor excursion during the week to unwind and visit the island. This is not all, we also plan to have an immersive installation centred on exploring a collective experience of emergence with the voluntary participation of all the attendees. We hope you will also be pleased to join! 

REGISTRATION

There are 35 available spots for external participants (non-IFISC members), and a waiting list will be established. The chance of selection increases if a poster abstract is submitted. After selection, participants will be asked to pay a fee of 400€, which will cover 5 nights (from the 22nd to the 26th of June) at the residency of the Universidad de las Islas Baleares, breakfast, lunch, coffee breaks and the excursion.

REGISTATION DEADLINE

25th of April

The selection will be announced at the end of April, beginning of May.

Registration HERE.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS

• Fernando Rosas, University of Sussex, UK
• Lauren Ross, University of California, Irvine, USA. Emergence in the Life Sciences
• Antonella Tramacere, Università Roma Tre, Italy. The Promise and Limits of Emergentist Approaches to Cognitive Evolution
• Ivana Konvalinka, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark. Are human coordination dynamics embedded in social network structures?
• Carmen Miguell, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain. Signatures of criticality in the collective decisions of social animal groups
• Leonardo Gollo, IFISC, Spain. On the Emergence of a Hierarchy of Timescales in the Brain: Reconciling Criticality with Temporal Processing
• David Sanchez, IFISC, Spain. Emergence in language: Theoretical models and data analysis
• Lucas Lacasa, IFISC, Spain. Emergence of collective learning in coupled neural networks
• Borjan Milinkovic, NeuroPSI, France. Emergence through Dynamical Closure
• Pedro Mediano, Imperial College London, UK
• Julia Mindlin, University of Leipzig, Germany. Advanced Methods in Nonlinear Time Series Analysis
• Madalina Sas, Imperial College London, UK. Together, but not the same: self-organisation towards emergent collectives
• Andrés Canales-Johnsons, University of Cambridge, UK. Large-scale integration of perceptual and predictive information is encoded by non-oscillatory neural dynamics
• Jordi Bascompte, University of Zurich, Switzerland. Tipping points in the assembly and disassembly of life across scales of biological organization

Featured Talks. 

You can find a first version of the program here.

ORGANIZERS

• Mar Estarellas, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University marestarellas@gmail.com 
• Ivan Mindlin, Paris Brain Institute, ivan.mindlin@icm-institute.org 
• Ruben Herzog, IFISC, rherzoga@gmail.com
• Samy Castro, University of Strasbourg, castro.novoa.samy@gmail.com 
• Borjan Milinkovic, NeuroPSI, borjan.milinkovic@icm-institute.org  
• Scientific Chairman: Claudio R. Mirasso, IFISC, claudio@ifisc.uib-csic.es 

CONTACT INFORMATION