Jeff Schank at  University of California, Davis, is compiling a website of as many researchers and scholars working with agent-based modeling as he can find. If you’re interested in being listed on his site, drop him a line. A brief glance at the list shows he’s got many of the leading lights, so if you’re interested in seeing the range and depth of applied ABM, it’s well worth a stop. Jeff also has a number of thoughtful essays on the nature & intellectual role of ABM for understanding human behavior:

[…] In this sense, performing simulations of agents with memory and using different strategies based on an agent’s memory, is the erection of new scaffolding for building insight and understanding into the evolution of cooperation.  Of course, the scaffolding may be faulty and our apparent understanding and insight may collapse or the scaffolding may allow us to only build insight and understanding in only a limited respect.  Nevertheless, it is a starting point from which other work can be compared.