Education
Winter School
The Complexity Science Hub offers its annual Winter School to early-career researchers who want to join a transdisciplinary network of colleagues to collaboratively explore complexity science. Winter School students will immerse themselves in complexity science as applied to particular real-world issues together with an expert faculty assembled from CSH scientists and renowned researchers from around the globe. The small program size affords extensive interactions among the entire group, which can lead to lasting connections and collaborations. Learn how theories and approaches from diverse disciplines can be used to understand and inform solutions to key challenges facing society and the planet – across systems and scales. The Winter School is an ideal way for early-career scholars and practitioners to deepen their use of complexity science theories and methods in their research.
Program Goals
The theme of the Winter School changes each year, allowing for deep review of a particular topic and the opportunity to connect with students and faculty with similar interests but different backgrounds and perspectives. The goal of every Winter School is to highlight how transdisciplinarity, collaboration, and rigorous quantitative methods can be used to understand the complex systems that underlie the world.
- Explore novel research ideas and approaches among an interdisciplinary group of adventurous students.
- Learn how (and why) complexity science approaches might be applied in your own research.
- Build collaborations and expand your professional networks, including with the world-class faculty.
2026 Rethinking Human Capital: The Past and Future of Work
There are many uncertainties about what the future of work will look like. What changes will new technologies bring? Will our workforce be able to adapt to the advances of AI? Which cities are best positioned to embrace the coming changes? How will we organize teamwork? What can we learn from past technological paradigm shifts? To answer these questions, we will explore theories from different fields, structured and unstructured datasets, as well as how to learn from past changes in the nature of work as a means of predicting where work – and our workforce – may be heading next.
The Winter School will bring together academics at the frontier of research on the future of work and the newly emerging literature that brings a complexity approach to the study of human capital and labor markets. The school will have a broad remit, exploring how tasks are reshaped by AI integration, skills mismatch and skills obsolescence, the functioning of labor markets, the spatial division of labor and redistribution of employment, and lessons from historical experiences of rapid technological change. Labs will teach students how to work with new data sources, including online job postings, GitHub repositories, and historical sources.
2026 Directors
2026 Faculty
Faculty will be announced in November.
2026 Dates & Venue
13–17 April 2026
Arrival & welcome: evening of Sunday, 12 April
Start of the school: morning of Monday, 13 April
End of the school: afternoon of Friday, 17 April
Complexity Science Hub
Metternichgasse 8
1030 Vienna AUSTRIA
2026 Program Fee
- Double-room occupancy : EUR 880
- Single-room occupancy : EUR 1130
- No accommodations : EUR 460
Program fee includes all meals and coffee breaks, course supplies, tuition, and, if applicable, accommodations Sunday-Friday. Partial tuition scholarships may be available for participants with financial need; instructions will be provided to accepted students.
Audience
The Winter School is aimed at graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, early-career faculty, and research professionals. Interested participants from government, NGOs, industry, or other sectors may also find the program of interest.
Structure
Each Winter School is unique, but the program comprises three core elements:
- lectures by the faculty
- formal and informal discussions among faculty and students
- group project work and/or practice labs
The Winter School is an intensive, residential experience and should be considered a full-time commitment. Students and faculty will share meals, and there may be evening events. Scheduled free time will be included so that students can explore the Winter School location with fellow participants and/or to continue informal discussions and collaborations.
Eligibility Requirements
Applicants should have Masters-level coursework in quantitative discipline (social, natural or information sciences, mathematics, engineering) and/or practical experience working in a quantitative domain related to the project theme. A basic command of coding in R or Python (including dataframes, data visualization, and NLP tools) and familiarity with GitHub for collaboration are expected. Prior experience with complexity science methods is not essential. The program is conducted entirely in English, and participants are expected to have working proficiency.
How To Apply
- The online application portal is accessible here.
- Applicants will submit:
(1) curriculum vitae, and (2) letter of motivation describing their interest in the program and how it intersects with their current work or future plans. Please ensure either the cv or motivation letter address prior experiences or skills with R or Python, and GitHub.
Contact
Hannah SchollAbout the Complexity Science Hub
The Complexity Science Hub (CSH) is Europe’s research center for the study of complex systems. We derive meaning from data from a range of disciplines – economics, medicine, ecology, and the social sciences – as a basis for actionable solutions for a better world. Established in 2015, we have grown to over 70 researchers, driven by the increasing demand to gain a genuine understanding of the networks that underlie society, from healthcare to supply chains. Through our complexity science approaches linking physics, mathematics, and computational modeling with data and network science, we develop the capacity to address today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.