Update: Because of COVID-19, SICSS-Montreal 2020 will be switched from an in-person event to a virtual event.
From the evening of Sunday, June 14 to the morning of Saturday, June 27, 2020, the Russell Sage Foundation and IVADO will sponsor the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, to be held in Montréal. The purpose of the Summer Institute is to bring together graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and beginning faculty interested in computational social science. The Summer Institute is for both social scientists (broadly conceived) and data scientists (broadly conceived). The organizer and principal faculty of the Summer Institute is Visseho Adjiwanou, professor at the department of Sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
The instructional program will involve lectures, group problem sets, and participant-led research projects. There will also be outside speakers who conduct computational social science research in a variety of settings, such as academia, industry, and government. Topics covered include text as data, website scraping, digital field experiments, non-probability sampling, mass collaboration, and ethics. There will be ample opportunities for students to discuss their ideas and research with the organizers, other participants, and visiting speakers. Because we are committed to open and reproducible research, all materials created by faculty and students for the Summer Institute will be released open source.
Participation is restricted to Ph.D. students, postdoctoral researchers, untenured faculty within 7 years of their Ph.D, and exceptionnaly to master students (those finishing their thesis). Most participant costs during the workshop, including accommodation and most meals, will be covered, and most travel expenses will be reimbursed up to a set cap. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and fields of study, especially applicants from groups currently under-represented in computational social science.
About thirty participants will be invited, and participants are expected to fully attend and participate in the entire two-week program. Participants with less experience with social science research will be expected to complete additional readings in advance of the Institute, and participants with less experience coding will be expected to complete a set of online learning modules on the R programming language. Students doing this preparatory work will be supported by a teaching assistant who will hold online office hours before the Institute.
Application materials are extended to Wednesday, April 15th, 2020. If you will need a visa, don’t wait the last minute to apply.
We will notify applicants solely through e-mail in end-April, and ask participants to confirm their participation very soon thereafter. Inquiries can be sent to sicss.montreal@gmail.com.
In addition to the SICSS core sponsors, SICSS-Montreal is generously sponsored by IVADO:
