Publications

Nanda Wijermans, Caroline Schill, Therese Lindahl, Maja Schlüter. 2025. Towards Understanding Collective Resource Use: The Role of Individual Attribution of Ecological Change. Advances in Social Simulation. Pages 565–575. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-91782-0_41

Common pool resources, like fish, timber, water, are essential in providing food, income and raw material. However, maintaining sustainable practices for common pool resources is a collective challenge due to the social and ecological uncertainties. Climate impacts only further complicates the collective governance of these resources, as resource availability will substantially change and reduce. To understand how do resource ...

Aytalina Kulichkina, Annie Waldherr, Nanda Wijermans. 2025. An Agent-Based Model of Online Protest and Repression in Authoritarian Settings. Advances in Social Simulation. Pages 305–319. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-91782-0_22

Social media can amplify protests in authoritarian settings but also enable repression by regimes and their supporters. Existing research on online protest and repression has established the need for exploring mechanisms affecting their dynamics—an inquiry well-suited for an agent-based modeling approach. Drawing on relevant theories and existing models, we present a conceptual agent-based model designed to simulate social med...

Gary Polhill, Melania Borit, Corinna Elsenbroich, Harko Verhagen, Nanda Wijermans. 2025. Ethical Dimensions to Empirical Applications of Agent-Based Social Simulation. Advances in Social Simulation. Pages 411–424. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-91782-0_30

Harko Verhagen, Nanda Wijermans, Bruce Edmonds, Wenyue Hua. 2025. Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: The Use of Generative AI Agents in Agent-Based Social Simulation. Advances in Social Simulation. Pages 507–515. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-91782-0_37

Generative AI is all over the place, mainly in the form of large language models (LLMs). Recently, LLM researchers moved into the world of replacing human participants in social and behavioural science research and even social simulation. In this paper we want to make our community aware of these developments, discuss our worries but also the potential for using LLMs productively with agent-based social simulation, and pose so...

Maja Schlüter, Tilman Hertz, Anja Klein, Nanda Wijermans. 2025. Disentangling the entangled in productive ways: modelling social–ecological systems from a process-relational perspective. Sustainability Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01648-0

Process-relational perspectives have been proposed as new ways of conceptualising, analysing and engaging with social–ecological systems (SES) that are capable of dealing with intertwinedness and complexity. The application of PR perspectives in SES research, however, remains challenging and largely conceptual. We explore the possibilities of combining process-relational thought with agent-based modelling as a methodology for ...

Maja Schlüter, Tilman Hertz, Anja Klein, Nanda Wijermans. 2024. Disentangling the entangled in productive ways: modelling SES from a process-relational perspective. SocArXiv Papers. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/hb9ry

Process-relational perspectives have been proposed as new ways of conceptualising, analysing and engaging with social-ecological systems (SES) that are capable of dealing with intertwinedness and complexity. The application of PR perspectives in SES research, however, remains challenging and mostly conceptual. We explore the possibilities and limitations of combining process-relational thought with agent-based modelling as a m...

Harko Verhagen, Corinna Elsenbroich, Nanda Wijermans. 2024. Agent Decision-Making Heterogeneity—Agent (Meta)Frameworks for Agent-Based Modelling. Springer Link. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57785-7_48

Agent-based models have continuously increased regarding the implementation of the complexity of agent decision making. This poses questions for the ontological foundation of ABM as well as having implications for research design and data collections. This paper situates the meta-modelling framework CAFCA within other contextual and multidimensional agent-architectures, in particular focusing on its contributions to ontology a...

Francesca Giardini, Melania Borit, Harko Verhagen, Nanda Wijermans. 2024. Modeling Realistic Human Behavior in Disasters. A Rapid Literature Review of Agent-Based Models Reviews. Springer Link. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57785-7_13

Agent-based models of human behaviors in emergencies are extremely important in prevention, preparedness, response, and mitigation of crises. However, there is huge variation in the modeling of human cognitions and actions, with varying degrees of realism and even more diverse definitions of how realism should be implemented in the models. The aim of this Rapid Literature Review is to identify existing patterns in modelling re...

Christian Kammler, Frank Dignum, Nanda Wijermans. 2024. Towards a Social Simulation Interaction Tool for Policy Makers—A New Research Agenda to Enable Usage of More Complex Social Simulations. Springer Link. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57785-7_14

Social simulations can be a powerful tool for policy makers and other decision makers to support them in their decision making process. To be a powerful tool, it is not only important that the agents in the simulation exhibit realistic–human like—behavior, but also that the simulation is empowering the policy maker to use it in a—for them—meaningful way. To tackle this problem, we require interaction tools and visualization ca...

Helen Fischer, Nanda Wijermans, Maja Schlüter. 2023. Testing the Social Function of Metacognition for Common‐Pool Resource Use. Cognitive Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13212

Metacognition, the ability to monitor and evaluate our own cognitive processes, confers advantages to individuals and their own judgment. A more recent hypothesis, however, states that explicit metacognition may also enhance the collective judgment of groups, and may enhance human collaboration and coordination. Here, we investigate this social function hypothesis of metacognition with arguably one of the oldest collaboration ...