Background and activities

I am a computational social scientist interested in the modelling and analysis institutions, where institutions are understood as manifestations of social behaviour, such as conventions, norms (i.e., socially enforced behaviour) and rules (e.g., legal rules enforced via laws and regulations). My research includes

  • the use of agent-based simulations to analyse and explain observed human behaviour (understanding the functioning of complex social systems), 
  • the encoding of laws and regulation and their representation in software (how we can make policies accessible to both humans and machines),
  • the computational analysis of institutions with respect to their complexity as well as associated dynamics (e.g., evaluating the structure and effect of existing/novel policy, and their interaction with social behaviour),
  • the development of technology that performs institutional functions in the real world (e.g., how we can automate the generation of robust smart contracts to solve governance challenges).

As part of my research, I am actively applying and further developing the Institutional Grammar originally proposed by Crawford and Ostrom) as a mechanism to represent institutions of diverse form and kind to make those accessible for computational treatment. Recent efforts include the development of the Institutional Grammar 2.0 as showcased in recent articles (see below) and the book "Institutional Grammar: Foundations and Applications for Institutional Analysis" (co-authored with Saba Siddiki). I am further involved in the Institutional Grammar Research Initiative (IGRI) whose mission is to provide a shared umbrella to all those interested in institutional analysis - irrespective of their disciplinary background (e.g., institutional and policy/legal scholars, social scientists more broadly, computer scientists, policy practitioners) and interests (e.g., theory and methodological development, content analyses, formal analyses, behavioural modeling). 

Besides my research, at NTNU I am teaching in the areas of cloud technologies and coordinate the Master in Applied Computer Science Programme (MACS).

For more details and an overview of publications, please refer to the links to my website. (The list of publications at the bottom of this page largely contains recent publications.)

Scientific, academic and artistic work

A selection of recent journal publications, artistic productions, books, including book and report excerpts. See all publications in the database

Journal publications

Books

Part of book/report

  • Afshar Sedigh, Amir Hosein; Purvis, Martin K.; Savarimuthu, Bastin Tony Roy; Frantz, Christopher; Purvis, Maryam A. (2021) Impact of Different Belief Facets on Agents’ Decision—A Refined Cognitive Architecture to Model the Interaction Between Organisations' Institutional Characteristics and Agents' Behaviour. Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, Norms, and Ethics for Governance of Multi-Agent Systems XIII.
  • Afshar Sedigh, Amir Hosein; Purvis, Martin K.; Savarimuthu, Bastin Tony Roy; Purvis, Maryam A; Frantz, Christopher. (2021) Impact of Meta-roles on the Evolution of Organisational Institutions. Multi-Agent-Based Simulation XXI.
  • Frantz, Christopher. (2020) Unleashing the Agents: From a Descriptive to an Explanatory Perspective in Agent-Based Modelling. Advances in Social Simulation. Looking in the Mirror.
  • Frantz, Christopher; Ghorbani, Amineh. (2019) Inequality: Driver or Inhibitor of Collective Action?. Social Simulation for a Digital Society.
  • Kianpour, Mazaher; Kowalski, Stewart James; Zoto, Erjon; Frantz, Christopher; Øverby, Harald. (2019) Designing Serious Games for Cyber Ranges: A Socio-technical Approach. 2019 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW).
  • Frantz, Christopher Konstantin; Pigozzi, Gabriella. (2018) Modelling Norm Dynamics in Multi-Agent Systems. Handbook of Normative Multiagent Systems.
  • Zoto, Erjon; Kowalski, Stewart James; Frantz, Christopher; Lopez Rojas, Edgar Alonso; Katt, Basel. (2018) A Pilot Study in Cyber Security Education Using CyberAIMs: A Simulation-Based Experiment. Information Security Education - Towards a Cybersecure Society.
  • Zoto, Erjon; Kowalski, Stewart James; Katt, Basel; Frantz, Christopher; Lopez Rojas, Edgar Alonso. (2018) CyberAIMs: A tool for teaching adversarial and systems thinking. International Defence and Homeland Security Simulation Workshop, DHSS 2018.

Report/dissertation