From Monday, June 14 to Friday, June 25, 2021, Maastricht Law & Tech Lab will organise the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, to be held virtually at Maastricht University. SICSS-Law is sponsored by Russel Sage Foundation, University Fund Limburg/SWOL, and Digital Legal Studies Cluster. 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). SICSS-Law is unique among partner locations in its focus on legal data, both from the perspective of collection as well as analysis . Throughout the duration of the Institute in Maastricht, we will explore how computational methods can be applied to legal research questions.
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, machine learning, 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, and untenured faculty within 7 years of their Ph.D. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and fields of study, especially applicants from law and other groups currently under-represented in computational social science. We particularly encourage participants from Central and Eastern Europe to apply to SICSS-Law. About 30 participants will be invited, and participants are expected to fully attend and participate in the entire program.
Application materials are due Monday, 29 March 2021 at 11:59 CET, 22 March 2021 at 11:59 CET .
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, all events will take place online.