Our last stop - Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study

Reflection, Research blog · 03 Jul 2026

We, Bich, Jonatan and Rozemarijn, enjoyed our last CAT meeting in April 2026. For this last and fourth meeting, we were hosted by the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies in Amsterdam. The CAT programme – Constructive Advanced Thinking – provides the opportunity to work up to two weeks at four different Institutes of Advanced Studies in Europe. We travelled to Uppsala, Paris, Montpellier and Amsterdam, and reflected in this final blog on the process.

Our journey

In the free thinking space of Uppsala, we tried to see models as organisms. Inspired by Linnaeus, in the place where he worked and collected his plants, Bich tried out to describe the lifecycle of a model, their natural habitat, and the elements that allow them to thrive. We found that it gave us a common language to both talk about what happens in, around, and to a model and why and how it came to be as it is.

In Paris, we were invited to turn our ideas into a goal-oriented project that was fit for applications. We developed a basis, but the ideas needed more time to mature. We ended up thinking mostly about how we could move from denouncing models as controversial tools - which often created opposition and limited the space - to constructively explore how to engage with models differently. How can we move away from using models as truth-tellers or means of control? We phrased it positively, to explore how to use models to use them to contribute to environmental justice.

In Montpellier, we presented and discussed these new ideas with researchers and practitioners who worked with water and models. The engineers and social scientists validated the process and helped us find a constructive language to address the influence of water models. It led to the development of a project on constructively learning and addressing the political influence of water models, ready to be launched when money and time is available.

Finalising CAT

During this last CAT meeting we aspired to replicate the atmosphere and way of working of our first CAT experience in Uppsala. We went back to the free thinking space, without strings or expectations attached, to explore what lessons we could further draw from seeing models as organisms. An important prerequisite was that we did not pre-emptively judge any model or model development. In this free thinking space of models as organisms, and using our own modelling experience as a basis, we explored two dynamics in a model’s lifecycle, created through the interaction between people, technology and process:

Affordance: It is how a model channels action into a narrower field of practical options. A model affords some interventions while foreclosing others. It makes some actors and options visible and others invisible. It can compress plural worlds into a manageable decision architecture; they structure use, interpretation, and action.
Potentiality: It is the excess of the model over its present use. A model contains unrealized possibilities. It can be reopened, translated differently, democratized, hybridized with situated knowledge, or turned against the logics that first sustained it.

The outcome of the last CAT week is that seeing models as organisms, and exploring their affordance and potentiality, does lead to rich analyses and a good basis to identify if, and where, it is possible to divert a modelling process towards a different purpose. It is a thought exercise that can help a group to reflect on their modelling ethics and discuss if and how to adjust their modelling practices.

A scientific article is still stewing in our brains, but certainly will come out sometime this year. The CAT programme has helped us to expand our thinking and see science as a creative process. Enriching!