Frank Dignum, born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1961. Ph.D. from VU University Amsterdam. Associate Professor of Computer Science at Utrecht University.
Fellow (1 September 2013 – 31 January 2014)
MODELLING SOCIAL REALITY: EMERGENCE OF THE GLASS CEILING
Research Question
Which are the essential concepts of social reality that should be used in computer simulations in order to create “realistic” emergence of social patterns of behaviour?
Project Description
The main goal is to determine the most prevalent, core social concepts that can be used to explain fundamental human behaviour and the emergence of group behaviour. We need to find a balance between realism of the theory and efficiency of the implementation of this theory. If a theory is very rich and captures many realistic aspects of social reality, but is not efficiently implementable it cannot be used to test the theory using simulations and thus will not easily advance social science theory. However if the theory is efficiently implementable but does not capture enough aspects of reality it will also not lead to valid insights in social reality. We will use the emergence of the glass ceiling as test case.
Selected Publications
1) F. Dignum, V. Dignum (2009). Emergence and enforcement of social behavior. In Anderssen, R.S., R.D. Braddock and L.T.H. Newham (eds) 18th World IMACS Congress and MODSIM09 International Congress on Modelling and Simulation. Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand and International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, July 2009, pp. 2377-2383.
2) Grossi, D., Royakkers, L. & Dignum, F.P.M. Organizational Structure and Responsibility. An Analysis in a Dynamic Logic of Organized Collective Agency. Journal of Artificial Intelligence & Law, 15, pp. 223-249, 2007.
3) F. Dignum. Autonomous Agents with Norms, In Artificial Intelligence and Law, Volume 7, 1999, pp. 69-79.