Next spring conference: 16.-21.03. 2025 in Regensburg
Φ·SOE = Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
(= Physics of Socio-Economic Systems Division)
The mathematical and computer simulation of social and economic systems is receiving more and more attention. The dedicated scientific community is rapidly growing and involves, besides sociologist and economists, also physicists, mathematicians, computers scientists, biologists, engineers, and the communities working on complex systems and operations research. To keep an overview, it is important to be well connected, and to benefit from shared information platforms.
The division on "Physics of Socio-Economic Systems" (Φ·SOE, previously AKSOE/AGSOE) is committed to support the scientific exchange between the scientific disciplines involved. It has currently more than 300 members and organizes a spring conference with typically 70-100 contributions each year. During this conference, it features outstanding international speakers not only from socio- and econo-physics, but also from sociology and economics. Furthermore, scientists are awareded for outstanding innovative work in this field.
We have a rolling call for special / focus sessions - drop us a mail at and your topic gets listed in the submission interface.
Website for the Sping Coference in Regensburg 16.-21.03. 2025
Abstract Einreichung: https://www.dpg-tagung.de/r25/submission.html?language=en
Planned focus sessions in Regensburg:
- Self-regulating and learning systems: from neural to social networks organized by Anastasia Golovin, Johannes Zierenberg, & Viola Priesemann
Living systems have a remarkable ability to self-stabilize. How do such systems, made up of small, active units, achieve meaningful goals without global control? This focus session will explore recent advances in self-regulating networks, demonstrating how these systems transition between states, adapt to perturbations and learn to navigate new environments.
Invited talk: Jana Lasser (University of Graz) - Large Language Models, Social Dynamics, and Assessment of Complex Systems organized by Vincent Brockers, Johannes Zierenberg & Viola Priesemann
Recent Large Language Models (LLMs) learn the statistics of human communication, and hence they present a promising way of simulating societal interactions and opinion formation. Moreover, their flexible architecture makes them versatile to also learn the statistics of other complex systems. - We will discuss how to make best use of these advancements to model social interactions and dynamics across different scales and settings, how to use them to assess sentiments, narratives and opinions, and also how one can use LLMs to also understand other complex systems. Our aim is to offer an evaluative perspective on both the potential and challenges that are intrinsic to this rapidly evolving research area.
Invited talk: Giordano De Marzo (Complexity Science Hub, Vienna)
Further Invited talks:
- Tiziana Di Matteo (Kings College London)
- Diego Rybski (Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development)
Previous Conferences:
Spring conference - March 17-22 2024 in Berlin
- Plenary talks: Ginestra Bianconi (Queen Mary University of London), Susanna Manrubia (CSIC)
- Symposium: Statistical Physics of Economic and Financial Systems (SYEF)
Organisation: Tobias Wand (Universität Münster) - Tutorial: Dynamics of Economic and Financial Systems
- Sympoisum: Diversity and Equality in Physics
Organisation: Fariba Karimi (Complexity Science Hub Vienna), Agnes Sandner (AKC coordinator, Aurich/Ihlow), Philipp Hövel (Saarland University) - Focus session: Machine learning for complex socio-economic systems
Organisation: Philipp Hövel (Saarland University), Ingo Scholtes (Würzburg University)
Invited talk: Kristina Lerman (University of Southern California) - Focus Session: Dynamics of Socio-Ecological Systems
Organisation: Jonathan Donges (PIK), Eckehard Olbrich (MPIMiS) - Focus session: Statistical Physics of Political Systems
Organisation: Karoline Wiesner und Paula Pirker Diaz (Universität Potsdam)
Invited talk: Edward Lee (Complexity Science Hub Vienna) - Invited talks: Jean-Philippe Bouchoud (CFM), Marc Keuschnigg (Universität Leipzig), Mehrnaz Anvari (Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing)
Spring conference - March 26-31 2023 in Dresden, Germany
- Symposium: Dynamics of Opinion Formation – from Quorum Sensing to Polarization (SYOF) - Symposium of the divisions SOE, DY and BP
Organisation: Sven Banisch, Karlsruhe, Germany, Jens-Christian Claussen, University of Birmingham, Großbritannien, Karoline Wiesner, Universität Potsdam, Deutschland - Tutorial: Stochastic process of opinion formation dynamics
- Focus session: Critical transitions in society, economy, and nature (joint SOE/DY)
organized by Diego Rybski and Fakhteh Ghanbarnejad
Spring Conference 2022, held in autumn
- Symposium Collective Social Dynamics from Animals to Humans (SYCS) - Symposium of the divisions SOE, DY and BP
Organisation: Fakhteh Ghanbarnejad, Dresden, Germany, Eckehard Olbrich, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, Philipp Hövel, University College Cork, Ireland
Invited Speakers: Frank Schweitzer (ETHZ), Laura Alessandretti (Copenhagen), Sven Banisch (Karlsruhe), Pawel Romanczuk (Berlin) and Hanja Brandl (Konstanz) - Tutorial: Stochastic Processes from Financial Risk to Biology
Invited Speakers: Paul Embrechts (ETHZ), Tobias Galla (IFISC), Bernhard Mehlig (Gothenburg) - Plenary Talk: Ricard Sole (U Pompeu Fabra)
- Invited Talks: Rainer Hegselmann (Frankfurt / Bayreuth), Theo Geisel (Göttingen)
Spring Conference 2021, held in autumn (online)
Spring conference 2021 (online)
Spring conference 2020 (online)
Spring conference 2019 in Regensburg
- The Young Scientist Award (YSA) 2019 goes to Andrea Baronchelli
- Plenary talk by Christopher Moore (Santa Fe)
- Invited talks by Jan Lorenz (Bremen), Tiago Peixoto (Bath), and Tiziana di Matteo (London)
- Joint Focus Session (with DY and BP) on Multilayer Networks (org: Anna Zakharova, Sarika Jalan)
keynote speakers: Immaculada Leyva (Madrid), Filippo Radicci (Indiana), Eckehard Schöll (Berlin), Ralph Andrzejak (Barcelona) - Insurance risks
- Symposium: Pattern Formation (DY/BP/SOE)
Associated event: COLLAB2018 - Workshop on Collective Animal Behaviour (org: Ghanbarnejad / Eguiluz)
- Focus Session (DY/SOE/BP) Physics of Contagion Processes (org: Philipp Hövel, Pawel Romanczuk, and Jonathan Donges) - Contributions welcome!
Invited Speakers: Vittoria Colizza, Jesus Gomez Gardenes, Peter Grassberger, Iain Couzin, Andrzej Nowak - Tutorials: Models of Economic and Financial Markets: Thomas Guhr (Duisburg), Ole Peters (London)
- Evening talk: Frank Schweitzer (Zurich): Kollektive Dynamik in Sozialen Systemen: Von Aristotoles zu Boxxy
- Invited speakers: Thomas Lux (Kiel): Estimation of agent-based economic models, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud (Paris): Tipping points and crises in simple macroeconomic models
- Session: Power grids / Energy Systems
- Focus Session: Computational Social Science
- Yough Scientist Award 2018: Prize talk by Martin Rosvall - Congratulations!
Spring meeting 2017 in Dresden
- Symposium Physics of collective mobility (org: Marc Timme, Hartmut Löwen and Vitaly Belik)
- Focus Session (SOE) Cities as complex systems (org: Diego Rybski)
- Focus Session (DY/SOE/BP) Controlling complex networks in nature and engineering (org: Anna Zakharove and Eckehard Schöll)
- Plenary talk: Stuart Kauffman
- Invited speakers: Marc Barthelemy, Cees Diks, Ernesto Estrada, Michael Schreckenberg, Michael Szell
Spring meeting 2016 in Regensburg
- Invited Speakers: Ernst Fehr (keynote, Zürich), Jorge Pacheco (plenary, Lisbon), Cars Hommes (Amsterdam), Michael Lässig (Cologne), Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron (Wroclav), Diego Garlaschelli (Lucca)
- Symposium "Scientometric maps and dynamic models of science and scientific collaboration networks" (joint SOE/DY/BP/jDPG)
speakers: Katy Börner, Alexander Petersen, Cassidy Sugimono, Marti Rosvall and Matus Medo - Symposium "Chimera states: coherence-incoherence patterns in complex networks" (joint DY/SOE)
speakers: Eckehard Schöll - Daniel Abrams – Ken Showalter - Victor Bastidas - Klaus Lehnertz
Spring meeting 2015 in Berlin (see also the poster...)
- Symposium (SOE/DY) Physics of Sustainability and Human-Nature Interactions (org.: Reik Donner and Diego Rybski):
Speakers: Anna Nagurney (U Massachusetts) "Design of sustainable supply chain networks for sustainable cities"; Hermann Held (Hamburg) "Dynamical effects of climate investment under uncertainty"; Salvador Pueyo (Barcelona) "Ecological econophysics for degrowth"; Tim Lenton (Exeter) "Physics concepts to anticipating and avoiding critical transitions"; Julia Steinberger (Leeds) - Special Keynote Talk: Simon Levin (Princeton): "Collective motion, collective decision-making and collective action: From microbes to societies"
- Invited speakers of the SOE sessions:
Duncan Watts (New York): "Computational Social Science: Exciting Progress and Future Challenges"
Luis Bettencourt (Santa Fe): "Cities, Scaling and Sustainability" - Focus Session "Complex contagion phenomena: Networks, Cascades and Feedback" (organizers: Fakhteh Ghanbarnejad and Dirk Brockmann)
- Tutorial session ("From spin models to macroeconomics") with tutorial lectures:
Sylvie Geisendorf (Berlin): "Macroeconomics in a nutshell, for physicists"
Sebastian Krause (Zagreb): "Spin models as microfoundation of macroscopic financial models"
Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron (Wroclaw) "Voter models and other dynamical spin models of social opinion formation"
Spring meeting 2014 Dresden (see also the poster)
- Invited talks:
Luís A. Nunes Amaral (Northwestern): Some Examples of the Impact of Big Data on the Study of Social Systems
Hans Jürgen Herrmann (Zurich): The robustness of complex networks
Cesar Hidalgo(Boston): Crystallized Imagination
Michael Macy(Cornell): The Mesh of Civilizations in the Global Network of Digital Communication - Symposium: Energy Meets Economy: Dynamics and Statistics of Future Energy Systems (org. Marc Timme and J C Claussen) with invited speakers:
Reiner Kümmel (Würzburg) Energy and the Economy
Rudolf Sollacher (SIEMENS, München) Smart Grids - From incentives to coupled markets
Oliver Richters (Wiesbaden), Dirk Witthaut (Jülich), Joachim Peinke (Oldenburg) - Symposium: Stochastic Dynamics of Growth Processes in Biological and Social Systems (org. Tobias Galla and Arne Traulsen) with invited speakers:
Tibor Antal (Edinburgh), Andrea De Martino (Rome), Madeleine Leisner (Munich), Baruch Meerson (Jerusalem), Bernhard Mehlig (Göteborg)
For earlier conferences see here.
Old newsletters:
- Download the Φ·SOE newsletter (April 2010)
- Download the Φ·SOE newsletter (October 2009)
- Download the Φ·SOE newsletter (August 2009)
- Download the Φ·SOE newsletter (July 2009)
- Working Group on Physics of Socio-Economic Systems (AGSOE) is a Division of the DPG (SOE), starting October 1, 2009 >>more