SICSS-Covenant

June 19 to June 29, 2022 | Covenant University, Ogun State, Nigeria

Schedule & Materials

Sunday June 19, 2022
  • 09:00-18:00 Arrivals

  • 18:00- Welcome Dinner

Monday June 20, 2022
  • 09:00-11:00 Opening Ceremony

  • 11:00-12:15 Introduction to Computational Social Science

  • 12:15-13:00 New Methods for Social Science Research in the Digital Age

  • 13:00-14:00 Lunch

  • 14:00-15:00 R for Social Sciences and Humanities

    Over the last few years, free and open-source tools like R have become increasingly popular in research environments. The R programming language offers analysts a way to perform data manipulation and wrangling, analysis and modelling, and visualisation in one place. R can also be used to develop presentations, reports, books and even websites.
    In this presentation, the speakers will introduce R as a tool for humanities and social science researchers. We will look at a handful of specific applications of R. We will also introduce the audience to useful resources, communities, and learning opportunities.
    Finally, we will explore a case study where R was used as part of a PhD study to perform text mining on legal documents. This project also inspired the development of an open educational resource during a mentorship through Open Life Sciences (OLS) that aims to highlight the benefits of using R in the legal profession and research environments.

  • 15:00-16:00 From social scientist to computational social scientist: Redefining research agenda in SSA

  • 16:00-17:30 Tutorial: Introduction to R for CSS

  • 17:30-18:00 Announcements

  • 18:00- Dinner

Tuesday June 21, 2022
Wednesday June 22, 2022
Thursday June 23, 2022
Friday June 24, 2022
Monday June 27, 2022
  • 09:00-09:15 Housekeeping and Announcements.

  • 09:15-10:30 Tutorial: {sfnetwork}: Tidy Geospatial Networks in RSpatial networks in R [Slides, Annotated Code]

    Geospatial networks are graphs embedded in geographical space. That means that both the nodes and edges in the graph can be represented as geographic features: the nodes most commonly as points and the edges as linestrings. The structure and characteristics of geospatial networks go beyond standard graph topology, and therefore it is crucial to explicitly take space into account when analyzing them. The sfnetworks R package is created to facilitate such an integrated workflow. It brings together the sf package for spatial data science and the tidygraph package for standard graph analysis. The core of the package is a data structure that can be provided as input to both the graph analytical functions of tidygraph as well as the spatial analytical functions of sf, without the need for conversion. Additionally, it offers a set of geospatial network-specific functions, such as routines for shortest path calculation, network cleaning and topology modification.

  • 10:30-13:00 Group Exercises

  • 13:00-14:00 Lunch

  • 14:00-16:00 Group Exercises

  • 16:00-18:00 SICSS-Africa + African Descendants Inaugural Joint Panel (with: SICSS-JIAS/IPATC, SICSS-West/Central Africa & SICSS-Howard/Mathematica): Interrogating Data Collection Methods Focused on African and African Descendents Around the World: Problems, Realities, And Future Opportunities.

    For Development interventions to solve current and future crises data must be reliable and of high quality. The reality is, concerns about data validity pose a significant bottleneck for generating theoretical insights into the complexity of issues peculiar to peoples of Africa and the African diaspora. Previous attempts at circumventing data challenges in Africa have relied on surveys, estimates, or models that often do not reflect the reality in many African countries. In order to have a robust discussion, certain questions must be asked:

    • What challenges exist in the collection of precise data?
    • How do these challenges affect how poverty indices and reports are generated?
    • What can stakeholders do to improve data quality?
    • What unique tools are available to collect more precise data that includes the perspectives of the communities studied?

      This panel will discuss key challenges in the collection of precise data as well as how these challenges influence how African and African diaspora populations are studied and economic indices are generated. The panelists will draw from their unique expertise and experiences working with different forms of data to critically reflect/challenge current data collection methods, while highlighting innovative strategies for collecting data about Africans and the African diaspora.
  • 18:00- Dinner

Tuesday June 28, 2022
  • 09:00-09:15 Housekeeping and Announcements.

  • 09:15-12:00 Group Exercises

  • 12:00-14:00 Tutorial: Becoming a package developer: An Introduction [Slides & Annotated Code]

    R packages are an ideal way to package and distribute R code and data for re-use by others. In this session, with a live demo, we shall demystify the creation of an R package using automated tools like usethis. We will also uncover why to create a package (or not), how to improve your R package and your package development skills. The session will also highlight how to solve the challenges you will encounter in developing an R package. Lastly, we will discuss how to find your happy place in the world of R package development – as a devoted maintainer of one package or a valued contributor to dozens of packages.

  • 14:00-15:00 Lunch

  • 15:00-16:00 Group Exercises

  • 16:00-17:00 Building a Reproducible Workflow

  • 17:00- Dinner

Wednesday June 29, 2022
  • 09:00-09:15 Housekeeping and Announcements.

  • 09:15-13:00 Group Exercises

  • 13:00-14:15 Break

  • 13:15-15:15 Group Exercises

  • 15:15- Closing Dinner and Goodbye.

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