June 14 to June 25, 2021 | Princeton University | Virtual event
SICSS-Princeton is designed for Ph.D. students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty that are within 7 years of receiving their Ph.D. or are untenured. In exceptional situations, we may accept applicants who do not meet this criteria exactly. There are no restrictions based on citizenship, country of study, or country of employment. About 30 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 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 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) likelihood to benefit from participation; 4) likelihood to contribute to the educational experience of other participants; 5) potential to spread computational social science to new intellectual communities and areas of research; and 6) alignment with our eligibility criteria. Further, when making our evaluations, we attempt to account for an applicant’s career stage and previous educational opportunities.
Applicants must submit the following documents: (i) a curriculum vitae, (ii) a statement (maximum three pages) describing both any current research and your interest in computational social science, (iii) 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. Applicants who are graduate students or postdoctoral researchers must submit two letters of recommendation from faculty advisors. Letters of recommendation should be as informative as possible about your standing in your program, general ability, research potential, and (if applicable) special interest in computational social science. 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 Monday, February 22, 2021 at 11:59 ET. All application materials must be submitted through the Fluxx system run by the Russell Sage Foundation. It can take up to two business days for your Fluxx account to be created. Applications that are not complete by the deadline may not receive full consideration. We will notify applicants solely through e-mail by Monday, March 15, 2021 Friday, March 26, 2021, and will ask participants to confirm their participation very soon thereafter.
Inquiries can be sent to rsfcompsocsci@gmail.com.
Yes, but not at the same time. For example, you can apply to SICSS-Princeton, and then if you are not accepted you can apply to one of the other locations if it has a later deadline. However, you cannot have an applications under review at two locations simultaneously.
No. Every year we have more applicants than we can accept, and we would like everyone to have a chance to participate in SICSS once before we allow folks to participate twice.
If you have recommendation letters, add the email addresses for your two recommenders to your application in Fluxx; they will receive an email with instructions on how to submit. Applicants should not submit recommendation letters on their own. If one of your recommenders did not receive an email from Fluxx, have them check their spam folder; otherwise, contact us and we can help you troubleshoot the issue. Please be mindful of the application deadline when informing your recommenders about the submission process.
If you are confused about some of the application fields (e.g. Organization EIN), please just input as much information as you can. Also note that the account creation process can take a couple of days; please plan to create an account on Fluxx well in advance of the application deadline.
You can host a partner location of the Summer Institutes of Computational Social Science (SICSS) at your university, company, NGO, or government agency.