What does your mobile phone have to do with the disappearance of mountain gorillas in the eastern Congo? And what are those Russian pilots doing there? If we want to understand how international relations in a postcolonial world intersect with consumerism, sustainability and the worldwide rush for natural resources, there is no better way than applying complexity theory. Using telling examples, Sidney will take us through the possibilities and promises of complexity thinking, encouraging us to step away from the increasingly urgent limits of Newtonian science and inviting us to reflect on our own role in interconnected webs of international relations that tie together our world today.
Sidney Dekker (PhD Ohio State University, USA, 1996) is Professor and Director of the Safety Science Innovation Lab at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and Professor at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University in the Netherlands.