In an UNcertain and Complex world, we need to develop Adaptive Governance approaches and Emergent Design techniques. In UNCAGED, Professor Anthea Roberts and Professor Miranda Forsyth explore techniques for better understanding, navigating and managing complex systems. This forms part of a broader set of collaborative projects with Professor Katherine Daniell (School of Cybernetics) and Dr Ryan Young (Futures Hub) about Governing in Complexity.

Today’s social, political, environmental and technological challenges are increasingly interconnected. Climate change, pandemics, rising inequality, new forms of insecurity and growing great power competition dominate our daily news feeds. Domains that previously operated relatively separately, such as economics, security and the environment, are colliding in current policy-making. Established power structures are being contested and re-shaped. Problems in one country or community are spilling over into others through networks of connectivity—whether they be bank failures in the global financial crisis or health crises and supply chain shocks during COVID-19.

While our challenges have become more interconnected, our scholarship and policy responses find it hard to break free of the shackles of disciplinary divisions and subject-area silos. Understanding and addressing these multifaceted issues requires fresh thinking that is UNCAGED. Drawing on insights from complexity theory, members of this team explore approaches for better understanding and responding to various interdependent social, political, economic and ecological challenges of the 21st century. They are developing a series of tools, techniques and frameworks for developing more systemic and integrative approaches to understanding complexity. In the face of fast-paced change and uncertainty generated by myriad interconnections, they explore flexible and adaptable interventions that are subject to continual monitoring, evaluation and learning.

UNCAGED traverses multiple domains and scales, from community-led regulatory innovation in Pacific Islands and the spread of violence in PNG, to great power competition between China and the United States and investment treaty reform negotiations at the United Nations. Across this diversity, we look for common techniques that scholars, policy makers and change agents of all descriptions can use to better understand and navigate complexity. In particular, UNCAGED focuses on the following questions:

• Systemic thinking: why do we need to develop ways of understanding and intervening in complex adaptive systems that are more systemic, holistic and integrative, and less reductionist? How can we better achieve this goal in academia, policy making and practice?

• Integrative complexity (dragonfly thinking): how can we use bifocal, trifocal and multifocal approaches to differentiate competing perspectives and integrate them into more holistic frameworks for better understanding complex, multifaceted realities?

• Innovation and change: how do identities and networks affect possibilities for innovation and change in complex systems? What role is played by border crossers and boundary spanners (insider-outsiders)? How is incremental and transformative change achieved in complex systems, including when governed or regulated by multiple complex organisations or decision making bodies?

• Design and management: how can actors design better structures and governance approaches for managing complex, contested and evolving fields? What role might flexibility, adaptability and experimentation play in dealing with increasing uncertainty? How can timely and effective decisions be made in a rapidly changing world given complexity and uncertainties? What sort of meta-structures are required to deal with diversity of views and divided (and sometimes asymmetric) power?