POLDER

Vacancy — Amplifying the Impact of Behavioural Interventions with Complexity Science Are you a systems thinker with affinity with the social and behavioral sciences? Are you motivated to ensure that complexity science makes its way to the real world of government communication and pol...

Vacancy: Amplifying Behavioural Interventions w/ Complexity Science
📍 UvA, Amsterdam | 💼 30.4–38 hrs/week | 💶 €3.5–5.5K
⏳ <Oct 26, 2025

Join us to bridge complexity science with real-world policy work.

✉️ j.w.bolderdijk@uva.nl

Advice: Shaping the future – a guideline for transformative policy | Adviesraad voor wetenschap, technologie en innovatie Complex societal challenges require innovative solutions and fundamental changes in our way of living and working. With well-coordinated combinations of policy instruments, the government can bring ab...

[6/6]
AWTI: Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (2025) | "Shaping the Future – A Guideline for Transformative Policy"
Advisory report to the Dutch government on integrating systems thinking into formal transformation efforts.

Carbon pricing drives critical transition to green growth - Nature Communications This study reveals how carbon pricing can trigger critical tipping points, driving rapid and lasting emission reductions. When paired with redistributive measures, these policies can simultaneously foster equity and sustain economic stability.

[5/6]
Isaak Mengesha & Debraj Roy (2025) | "Carbon pricing drives critical transition to green growth" | Nature Communications
Carbon pricing + redistributive measures can induce tipping points that reduce emissions, while maintaining economic growth and decreasing inequality.

Systems approaches in public health: beyond mapping the causes - International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity Background Systems approaches are increasingly adopted in public health, commonly operationalised using system dynamics (SD). In public health, systems approaches have prioritised understanding the current system by describing the causes of a complex problem – e.g. obesity – as a system. It remains challenging to advance from understanding the current system producing undesired outcomes, towards responses to improve outcomes. Rather than creating models of the (entire) system, SD traditionally emphasises specific models to support policy development. While core concepts from SD have effectively been adopted in public health, there may be more to learn from SD when it comes to designing systems approaches that can fulfil the purpose of informing problem responses. Methods We reviewed seminal SD literature for clues on how to refine the focus of systems approaches, so that they lead to specific models supporting policy development. We conducted a narrative review, seeking a strategy that can be leveraged in systems approaches in public health. We concentrated on SD’s problem framing strategy, leading to two insights. Results Insight 1: Alongside the complex problem at stake (e.g. obesity), consider the intended result of the systems approach (coordination, learning, analysis or transformation). This helps recognise which system components are relevant to problem responses and make methodological decisions accordingly. Insight 2: If investigation of the current system reveals that only radical change can lead to improved outcomes, then proceed to envisioning how the system could be fundamentally transformed to support those desired outcomes. This next step helps to anticipate policy resistance, unintended consequences and counterintuitive behaviour by contemplating how the system would react due to proposed problem responses. Conclusions Applying a problem framing strategy, as is commonly done in SD, could make systems approaches in public health better positioned to inform problem responses. Problem framing stimulates the contribution of systems approaches to health policy, prioritising system components relevant to problem responses (Insight 1), which may not be part of the system (Insight 2).

[4/6]
Loes Crielaard et al. (2025) | "Systems approaches in public health: beyond mapping the causes" | IJBNPA
System dynamics literature review on moving from descriptive maps toward intervention-informed frameworks for effective public health action.

Diagrams-to-Dynamics (D2D): Exploring Causal Loop Diagram Leverage Points under Uncertainty Causal loop diagrams (CLDs) are widely used in health and environmental research to represent hypothesized causal structures underlying complex problems. However, as qualitative and static representat...

[3/6]
Uleman et al. (2024) | "Diagrams-to-Dynamics (D2D): Exploring CLD Leverage Points under Uncertainty"
Turns causal loop diagrams into system dynamics models, even in the absence of empirical data.

[2/6]
QSEM: Qualitative Systems Exploration Model
New semi-quantitative framework to explore system structures, which introduces the concept of control alongside impact.

Systems Thinking & Complex Transitions — A thread of reads & resources for those working at the edge of complexity, transformation, and actionable insight.

[1/6] 👇

Identifying key complex relations between education and healthcare in the Netherlands for future pandemic management - Health Research Policy and Systems Background The effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and subsequent policies in the Netherlands extended beyond healthcare, impacting other societal systems such as education. Th...

In their recent article, Hadjisotiriou et al. (2025) demonstrate how pandemic effects on education and healthcare are crucially interconnected.

Key finding: Integrated policymaking is essential. Without it, efforts to improve access in one system may unintentionally worsen outcomes in the other.

If you are interested, see the details of the event in the link above and send us your idea or profile. Use our contact form at polder.center/contact-us/ and ensure that you start the subject line with 'APH'.

POLDER is supporting the APH, and we invite our community to contribute by:
* Being or recommending a jury panel member, who will review the groups' policy advice;
* Contributing additional 1h-long interactive workshops; or
* Sharing the event with those who might want to participate (link above).

Amsterdam Policy Hackathon Join our data-driven policymaking hackathon event in Amsterdam | 2025

The student-led initiative Amsterdam Policy Hackathon (APH) is a weekend-long competition event where students and young professionals form multidisciplinary teams to develop data-informed policies or policy tools to help solve the most pressing local societal issues.
amsterdampolicyhackathon.org