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Eligibility

Participation is primarily geared towards advanced Master’s students, Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers with an interest in economics or political economy. However, there are no restrictions based on citizenship, country of study, or country of employment. About 20 participants will be invited.

The Summer Institute aims to bring together computational social scientists across all levels of technical experience. Participants with less experience with social science research are expected to complete additional readings in advance of the Institute, and participants with less coding experience are 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 during the two months before the Institute.

We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and fields of study, especially applicants from groups currently under-represented in computational social science. We evaluate applicants along a number of dimensions: 1) research and teaching in the area of computational social science 2) contributions to public goods, such as creating open source software, curating public datasets, and creating educational opportunities for others 3) focus on causal identification 4) originality/creativity of the research ideas 6) likelihood to contribute to the educational experience of other participants 7) potential to spread computational social science to new intellectual communities and areas of research

Further, when making our evaluations, we attempt to account for an applicant’s career stage and previous educational opportunities.

How To Apply

Applicants must submit the following documents:

• a curriculum vitae (including the name and contact of 2 references)
• a statement (maximum three pages) describing both any current research and your interest in computational social science. We ask that the statement includes a research idea that you would be willing to realize using skills acquired during the Summer Institute
• one writing sample (no more than 35 pages). Co-authored work is acceptable for the writing sample, but if you submit co-authored work, we recommend that you include a few sentences describing the contributions of each individual author
• All applications must include an e-mail and an alternative means of contact (e.g., phone number).

In order to be guaranteed full consideration, all application materials must be submitted by February 22, 2021 and must be submitted through Google Form. Applications that are not complete by the deadline may not receive full consideration. We will notify applicants solely through e-mail by March 22, 2021, and will ask participants to confirm their participation by the end of April.

Inquiries can be sent to sicss.ethz2021@gmail.com.