30 December 2025
IAS partners with policy institutions such as the Netherlands Scientific Climate Council (WKR), the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), and the Municipality of Amsterdam. These collaborations promote mutual learning between researchers and policymakers and support the co-development of complexity-informed governance approaches.
A central pillar is POLDER, a collaborative space where policymakers, stakeholders and researchers work together to develop insights into complex policy questions. POLDER applies an interdisciplinary approach that combines participatory processes, complexity science, and computational modelling to support policymakers in dealing with complex challenges.
POLDER's work is organised around dedicated labs that embed research directly within policy contexts. One such lab focuses on Computational Modelling of Social Tipping Points (COMTIP) in collaboration with the RIVM. The lab explores how behavioural change, policy interventions and social dynamics can interact to produce large-scale societal shifts relevant to public health and sustainability. In addition, POLDER launched a lab with the Ministry of General Affairs to support policymakers in integrating complexity thinking into existing policy tools and intervention practices.
The IAS Policy Fellowship programme brings policy practitioners into the IAS research environment to collaborate with researchers working on complex problems. In the past years, the IAS has welcomed fellows from institutions such as the RIVM (Jeljer Hoekstra), Municipality of Amsterdam (Daniël Hogendoorn) and WKR (Albert Faber), who worked alongside researchers to exchange expertise and co-develop new approaches to governing complex systems.
In September 2025, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, in collaboration with IAS, launched the MSc programme Complex Systems and Policy. The programme trains students to analyse complex societal challenges by combining social science perspectives with data science and modelling. Through real-world projects with policy partners, students gain hands-on experience at the interface of science and policymaking.
By bringing researchers, students, and policy practitioners together within shared research environments, labs, and educational programmes, IAS is building sustained connections between complexity science and public decision-making. In the coming years, these collaborations are expected to further deepen, expanding the use of complexity-informed methods in policy contexts and strengthening IAS’s role as a place where interdisciplinary research meets the practical challenges of governing complex societal systems.