June 19 to June 29, 2022 | Duke University
SICSS-Duke 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 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 will be expected to complete additional readings in advance of the Institute, and participants with less experience coding will be expected to complete SICSS boot camp. 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. 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 your current research, your interest in computational social science, and why you want to attend SICSS (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.
All application materials must be submitted by February 28th through the Russell Sage Foundation’s Application Portal. A previous version of this page linked to a google form. If you already submitted your documents through the google form, please resubmit them through the RSF portal. Applications that are not complete by the deadline may not receive full consideration.
Yes, but not at the same time. For example, you can apply to SICSS-Duke, 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.
You can host a partner location of the Summer Institutes of Computational Social Science (SICSS) at your university, company, NGO, or government agency.