Sander van der Leeuw

Sander van der Leeuw is Professor and Director of the School of Human Evolution and Global Change at ASU. His work focuses on the dynamics of societies and their environment. His research interests are in the study of long-term dynamics of socio-environmental systems, reconstruction of ancient technologies, (ancient and modern) regional man-land relationships, GIS and modelling. Since 1981, he has worked on applying Complex Systems Theory in various ways in all these domains. From 1992, he coordinated a series of major research projects financed by the European Union in the area of socio-natural interactions and environmental problems. Among these projects are ARCHAEOMEDES I (1992-1994) and II (1996-1999), concerned with understanding and modelling the natural and anthropogenic causes of desertification, land degradation and land abandonment and their spatial manifestations, using the Complex Systems approach. The “Environmental Communication” project (1996-8) studied the difficulties of communication between scientists and decision-makers, while the MODULUS project (1997-1999) modelled land-use decision making from a complex systems perspective. The ISCOM project (The Information Society as a Complex System, 2003-2006) investigated the relationship between innovation and urban dynamics. In July 2001, he was appointed Secretary-General of the French National Council for the Coordination of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and in 2003 as Deputy Director for Social Sciences at the CNRS (2002-2003) and at the National Institute for the Sciences of the Universe, in charge of a program similar to the Long Term Ecological Research program in the US. After teaching appointments at Leyden, Amsterdam, Cambridge (UK) and Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne) he is presently Director of the School of Human Evolution & Social Change at Arizona State University. He is an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute (USA), a Correspondent of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds a Chair at the Institut Universitaire de France.



	Sander van der Leeuw Sander van der Leeuw is Professor and Director of the School of Human Evolution and Global Change at ASU. His work focuses on the dynamics of societies and their environment. His research interests are in the study of long-term dynamics of socio-environmental systems, reconstruction of ancient technologies, (ancient and modern) regional man-land relationships, GIS and modelling. Since 1981, he has worked on applying Complex Systems Theory in various ways in all these domains. From 1992, he coordinated a series of major research projects financed by the European Union in the area of socio-natural interactions and environmental problems. Among these projects are ARCHAEOMEDES I (1992-1994) and II (1996-1999), concerned with understanding and modelling the natural and anthropogenic causes of desertification, land degradation and land abandonment and their spatial manifestations, using the Complex Systems approach. The “Environmental Communication” project (1996-8) studied the difficulties of communication between scientists and decision-makers, while the MODULUS project (1997-1999) modelled land-use decision making from a complex systems perspective. The ISCOM project (The Information Society as a Complex System, 2003-2006) investigated the relationship between innovation and urban dynamics. In July 2001, he was appointed Secretary-General of the French National Council for the Coordination of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and in 2003 as Deputy Director for Social Sciences at the CNRS (2002-2003) and at the National Institute for the Sciences of the Universe, in charge of a program similar to the Long Term Ecological Research program in the US. After teaching appointments at Leyden, Amsterdam, Cambridge (UK) and Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne) he is presently Director of the School of Human Evolution & Social Change at Arizona State University. He is an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute (USA), a Correspondent of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds a Chair at the Institut Universitaire de France.
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