This workshop targets a set of core questions and challenges which include, but are not limited to:

1. What kind of difficult and challenging questions call for new methodological developments and how can qualitative approaches and creative interactions and mixings between qualitative, quantitative and AI methods be explored to promote novel insights and abductive leaps leading to more complex knowledge, capable of guiding actions?

2. What qualities and features of complex systems pose particular methodological challenges and/or call for new approaches and how can they be best captured by qualitative and synergetic/mixing-methods approaches?

3. What is “slipping” through or remaining invisible with mainstream methods and approaches that calls for methodological alternatives and innovations and of what kind?

4. How can we increase the methodological coherence of our research with the nature of complex systems with qualitative and interacting or “mixing”-methods approaches? 

5.  What guiding principles and meta-methodologies or frameworks can guide the exploration of  synergies in the interaction between methods?

6. How can qualitative approaches inform complexity informed methodologies? 

7. How can different philosophical approaches, and ontological and epistemological perspectives, inform different kinds of approaches to qualitative or mixing methods research on complex social systems?

8. How can synergetic, interacting or “mixing”-methods approaches reveal that which escapes our habitual methods and how can it support abduction? How can abduction inform the process of exploring methodological synergies?

9. What is the role of the researcher in complex methodological creativity?

10. What are the challenges of training for methodological complexity? What distinctive methodological challenges arise when studying complex social and human systems, compared with non-human or physical complex systems? 

11. What kinds of methodological issues do complex social systems bring that may be different to non-social/human complex systems? 

This Satellite workshop is organised in two parts: 

Part I includes contributed talks and keynote lectures which aim to address the challenge questions in ways that provide stimuli and input for the collective discussion in Part II.  

Part II includes a facilitated and participatory discussion, using a digital version of the Relatoscope* method, a complexity-informed method to promote complex relational dialogues. This dialogue will focus on critical challenges and the core questions and aim at supporting emergent or integrative insights.

This Satellite follows on from the 1st edition at CCS2025 in Siena, titled “QUALITATIVE AND MIXED-METHODS  APPROACHES IN SOCIAL COMPLEX SYSTEMS RESEARCH: Methodological challenges and innovations” . Importantly, it builds on that first workshop and explores some of the questions raised in it. 

Please note that participation in Part I is highly encouraged, but is not a prerequisite for Part II (subject to space limitations).

References

• Melo, A., & Campos, R. (2022). Facilitating scientific events guided by Complex Thinking: A case study of an online Inter/Transdisciplinary Advanced Training School. Informing Sci. Int. J. an Emerg. Transdiscipl., 25, 89–110. https://doi.org/10.28945/4934.  

• Melo, A. T., Caves, L. S. D., El-Hani, C. N., Renault, L., Gershenson, C., Soto-Andrade, J., … Morell, J. (Preprint - 2023, November 6). A Complexity-Informed Methodology for Interdisciplinary Dialogues: Key Questions and Challenges for Theory, Research and Practice on Modes of Thinking (In) Complexity. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/v6t2h

PROGRAMME (under construction)

(Abstracts here)

PART I

Reception of participants

Welcoming and Introduction

Framing presentations: Overview and outcome of the 1st edition and questions raised

Invited Keynote talk:

Contributing talks 1

Contributing talk 2 

Break with Poster Session

Contributing talk 3 

Contributing talk 4

Introduction and overview: the Relatoscope Method

The Relatoscope is a relational method, designed to promote the performance of a selected set of complex thinking movements to facilitate the emergence of  creative and abductive ideas which can open new possibilities for thinking and acting in relation to complex systems. It has been used as a tool to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogues (Melo et al, 2023; Melo & Campos, 2022). The Relatoscope method will be used to facilitate the emergence of new ideas in the insights during the dialogues regarding new possibilities for researching social complex systems using qualitative methods and creative interactions and relations between qualitative and quantitative methods. Images of analogue / physical Relatoscopes here.

Break

PART II

Facilitated focused discussion with the Relatoscope Method 

Focus questions for the dialogue:

• What kind of difficult and challenging questions call for new methodological developments and how can qualitative approaches and creative interactions and mixings between qualitative, quantitative and AI methods be explored to promote novel insights and abductive leaps leading to more complex knowledge, capable of guiding actions?

• What qualities and features of complex systems pose particular methodological challenges and/or call for new approaches and how can they be best captured by qualitative and synergetic/mixing-methods approaches?

• What is “slipping” through or remaining invisible with mainstream methods and approaches that calls for methodological alternatives and innovations and of what kind?

• How can we increase the methodological coherence of our research with the nature of complex systems with qualitative and interacting or “mixing”-methods approaches? 

•  What guiding principles and meta-methodologies or frameworks can guide the exploration of  synergies in the interaction between methods?

• How can qualitative approaches inform complexity informed methodologies? 

• How can different philosophical approaches, and ontological and epistemological perspectives, inform different kinds of approaches to qualitative or mixing methods research on complex social systems?

• How can synergetic, interacting or “mixing”-methods approaches reveal that which escapes our habitual methods and how can it support abduction? How can abduction inform the process of exploring methodological synergies?

• What is the role of the researcher in complex methodological creativity?

• What are the challenges of training for methodological complexity? What distinctive methodological challenges arise when studying complex social and human systems, compared with non-human or physical complex systems? 

• What kinds of methodological issues do complex social systems bring that may be different to non-social/human complex systems? 

Final Integration and next steps 

Submission Deadlines:  XXX

Notification to authors: XXXX

Sign-up & Consent:  Sign-up and consent before the event is strongly encouraged; acceptance on the day is subject to availability, as the workshop is limited to 20 participants.

We are now accepting contributions for the Satellite. Contributions can be submitted in the following modalities:

• Oral presentations (15 min presentations)

• Lightning talks (3 min presentations)

• Poster presentations (note: if slots are available, poster presenters will be invited to also perform a 3 min lightening talk in addition to the poster session which will take place during the coffee break.  

All contributing talks are expected to provide insights and input that will feed into the large group discussion to tale place during Part II of the event. Hence, they should directly relate to the topics of the workshop, namely the target questions and challenges  organising it (cf. Aims and Focus). Examples of applications of different qualitative, interactive and "mixing"-methods methods are welcomed but authors are invited to take a meta-reflexive methodological position about their work and connect it with our core focuses.

Deadlines: Submissions for posters and lightening presentations remain open and will be evaluated on a case by case basis. 

Format of submission

• Please submit a pdf containing the following information:  title of the presentation, name of authors and affiliations, name of presenting author, and corresponding contacts; an abstract up to 1 page (tables,  images and references are optional and  allowed on a second page); 3 keywords.

• Also attach a short statement of motivation for participating in this workshop. Please note that presenting authors will be required to participate in the entire workshop. 

Send your submission by email to: complexthinking.project@gmail.com

Conference Registration: Participants for this Satellite Workshop are required to register for the main Conference on Complex Systems 2026 - either the full programme or the satellites only.  You may be asked for proof of registration. 

Workshop Sign-up: Unlike other satellites, this workshop requires a sign-up (using this form)  which also describes the conditions for participation and records your informed consent. There are no additional costs for the satellite

Capacity: The workshop is limited to 20 participants. Acceptance will be considered by (i) order of registration AND (ii) short expression of motivation for participation.

Partial Participation: Please note that participation in Part I is highly encouraged, but is not a prerequisite for Part II (subject to space limitations).

Ana Teixeira de Melo, Robin Purshouse, Emma Upriched, Leo Caves, Letícia Renault

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