Institution
University of Bologna

Web Site
https://corsi.unibo.it/magistrale/InternationalRelations/rilm-nuovo-curriculum-forecasting-innovation-and-change-fic

Factual description
Forecasting, Innovation and Change (FIC) is a rather new curriculum (started in 2017) provided by the University of Bologna within the department of social sciences. It is a Master Degree’s curriculum, which integrates methods of the social and natural sciences to develop in graduate students the capacity to identify and interpret major drivers and trends shaping a rapidly changing world.

The Master includes two elective courses which have a strong linkage with the core ones: the first one deals with strategies and processes for creative thinking, while the second one with modelling frameworks to study evolving patterns of interaction in multi-agent systems, adopting strategies and methods from complex systems analysis.

The Master has an inherently strong multidisciplinary approach, as it gives the opportunity to students to choose among several courses dealing with political science theory, economics, history, as well as big data and complex systems.

Relevance in complex systems
All the courses provided within this master aim to develop higher order thinking. All lectures are concerned with giving students a global perspective of major social, economic and environmental issues, promoting a critical, innovative and multidisciplinary analysis.
FIC includes a specific course on complex systems (Complex Systems & Network Science) which provides students a compelling and wide overview of the main aspects involved in complex systems analysis, giving them both a theoretical and practical understanding of complex systems.

Strong points
- It is multidisciplinary at its core;

- It includes a specific course on complex systems applied to politics, which support the understanding of network science, game theory, chaos theory, Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) and many other theoretical approaches;

- It deals with global issues from a global perspective.

Transferability potential
FIC praxis can be an excellent starting point for the development of more graduate and undergraduate curricula including multidisciplinary practices and the adoption of complex systems for social sciences.