CEP at CECAN workshop on understanding complexity

CEP at CECAN workshop on understanding complexity

CEP's Dr Clare Twigger-Ross and Dr Bill Sheate will participate in a 1 day workshop on 9th June hosted by the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN) to tackle the question of 'What is complexity?'.

 Discussions will include:

• What are our different understandings of complexity?
• Examples of complexity in policy evaluation and design, and Nexus systems
• What factors in policy processes and Nexus systems make complexity difficult to handle?
• Sharing innovative ideas and approaches
• What tools can we bring/matching of tools to complex problems
• As a policy maker, how do I know I am dealing with a complex problem?

The workshop will focus on some of the real-world policy case studies put forward by CECAN's co-funders and provide an opportunity to plan a wider public 2 day residential workshop in September 2016.

The event is by invitation only.

CEP's Dr Clare Twigger-Ross at Evaluation of Complexity Workshop

Image: 'Maze' by Christina Gallivan on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

CEP’s Dr Clare Twigger-Ross at Evaluation of Complexity workshop

CEP is part of the  consortium of leading UK bodies who have initiated at new national research hub which  will be developing new ways to measure the effectiveness of domestic policies on energy, water, environment and food (the ‘nexus’), and how they affect wider society.

The focus of the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN) will be to pioneer, test and promote evaluation approaches and methods across the energy, environment and food nexus where complexity presents a challenge to policy interventions, and so contribute to more effective policy-making.

Based at the University of Surrey and launching on 1 March 2016 - prior to a launch event in the summer - CECAN has been backed by £2.45 million of funding provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in collaboration with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra); the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC); the Environment Agency (EA); and the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

Dr Clare Twigger-Ross from CEP will be attending the inception workshop this week Thursday 10 – Friday 11th March.