The challenge: New data and approaches to study complexity in the social world has often been without a concurrent focus on the foundations of scientific inquiry, including complex thinking, broad causal thinking, attention to epistemic lens, and integrating multiple disciplinary approaches. Further, the academic research model, with its resource-segregated networks, discipline-specific training, and short-term productivity metrics, contributes to a fragmented and potentially misleading understanding of the social world. In the second annual ISR Symposium on Complexity in the Social World, we will use ‘place’ as the case study to facilitate discussions on rigorous social science in the public interest.Using research on place as the case study, discussion topics will include:Complex thinking about the social worldThe contribution of the humanities the study of the social worldEpistemic lens and research transparencyTheories, frameworks, and the limits of traditional causal inferenceThe draw and danger of cool new dataAddressing the challenges of the academic model of sciencePresentations on the science of place will include:The relational nature of place in population social inequalitiesThe role of history in shaping placeThe racialization of place; the spatialization of racePlace as a neutral and rational driver of social inequalitiesApproaches to testing (causal) ideas around place