From Monday, June 14 to Friday, June 25, 2021, we organise the virtual Summer Institute in Computational Social Science at the University of Helsinki. 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).
At Helsinki we are especially working on topics such as
- political communication
- digital democracy
- crisis narratives
- interactive prototype development
- validity and reliability in computational social science
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. We focus on four broad families of computational social science
- data science
- network analysis
- simulations and complex systems
- interactive systems
In addition, we discuss crosscutting themes such as
- asking research questions through computational means
- data collection and management
- ethics
- validity and reliability
- research projects in computational social science era
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. We will use forthcoming book Coding Social Scinece to support these discussions.
We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and fields of study, especially applicants from groups currently under-represented in computational social science. About 20-30 participants will be invited, and participants are expected to fully attend and participate in the entire program.
Application materials are due March 19th.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, all events will take place online.