“You should prefer a good scientist without literary abilities than a literate one without scientific skills.” – Leonardo da Vinci

I am a complex systems scientist and Professor of Systems and Organisation based at the University of York UK. I used to try to keep this page up-to-date with the various roles and so on that I have, but inevitably it gets out of date. So instead here are a few links to things that I have done or been part of that you might find interesting.

• I was the Society and Ethics Pillar Lead at the Institute for Safe Autonomy.
• I have had a few different roles within the Science and Technology Studies Unit (University of York UK).
• For many years and during my PhD I was a member of the York Centre for Cross-disciplinary Systems Analysis (University of York UK).

Research Interests

My research interests are focused around the application of systems theory, complex systems theory, and network analysis techniques to the analysis of organisations and groups of organisations (business, governments etc). I combine modelling and simulation techniques (agent based modelling, and network analysis) with the analysis of information (both qualitative and using methods like natural language processing and machine learning/AI) to research organisations and society.

I am interested in how interventions can be made in complex systems and outcomes understood and evaluated. Related to this I am interested in how the culture, memory, and knowledge of an organisation can be theorised as an emergent property of the complex system itself. I am also interested in systemic processes of power and their consequences for our privacy and liberty, and I conduct some research on whistle blowers, cyber security, and leaks.

I also have an interest in how technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence can change the way organisations work, and I approach this work from a cybernetics and complexity perspective.

I also have a philosophical interest in complexity theory and complex thinking. Including the intellectual origins of the work (Cybernetics and systemic theory and so on), what these techniques say about failure, and the links between complexity society and other fields of study such as Assemblages and Atmospheres.

Background

My scientific background is in the modelling and simulation of biological systems. I started my academic career as a geneticist (BSc Genetics, University of Nottingham, UK) and quickly realised that it was the modelling aspects of this field that I was most interested in. For example, the modelling of drift and selection in populations (work that has carried forward into work on ngrams). I then went on to study for an MSc Information Processing (University of York, UK), and eventually did a PhD in Computational Biology (University of York, UK). Over this time, my interest in modelling social systems also developed.

General Research Themes

PhD applications in the following thematic areas are welcome (Complexity Theory, Network Analysis, and AI, ML, and Big Data).

• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. I am interested in how organisations use and integrate AI and ML into their operations. In particular I am interested in the role of AI and ML in decision making processes within organisations and the systemic effects that this will have on organisations in the future.
• Modelling and simulation of organisational behaviour. How do the interactions of connect organisations shape the development of economic sectors? What are the significance of hidden and explicit connections between businesses, such as shared directorships? This research uses network analysis techniques and modelling to investigate now relationships between business and the people running them influence those businesses and the wider economy.
• Data Mining and Analytics. Business (and society at large) generates huge amounts of information. Leveraging this mountain of information to extract value is becoming increasingly challenging. We use modelling and analytical techniques to help mine information out of Big Data.
• The effect of Big Data analytics on privacy and liberty. Information can be both a defender liberty, as it can increase transparency in society. It however can also be be used to erode our civil liberties and freedom, by increased surveillance by both the state and private sector.
• Systems of systems. Increasing dealing with the complexity of physical, natural and human systems, and how they are connected demands new approaches to their study. We use the notion of systems of systems to model different aspects of society, such as the distribution of risk in financial systems.

Expertise

• Modelling and Simulation of Complex Systems.
• Data mining.
• Artificial Intelligence
• Big Data – including storage in of data Graph Databases, Neo4J, NoSQL and MySQL.
• Programming Java, C/C++, GPGPU, PHP.

Update posts can be found on the blog page, and I have a YouTube channel.

1. Garnett, Philip, and Sarah M. Hughes. 2019. “Obfuscated Democracy? Chelsea Manning and the Politics of Knowledge Curation.” Political Geography 68 (January): 23–33. ↩︎