Special issue on computational and mathematical approaches to societal transitions

The event which eventually was to culminate in this special issue was the February 2007 Leiden University’s Lorentz Center workshop “Computational and Mathematical Approaches to Societal Transitions”. This workshop was intended to boost the exact-oriented research on societal transitions by bringing together researchers from diverse fields. During the cause of that week a couple of dozens of physicists, sociologists, economists, ecologists and social simulation researchers worked together producing ideas and prototypes for modeling approaches for transitions. Those ideas and prototypes further evolved into the articles in this special issue.1