People
Faculty
Matti Nelimarkka
Matti Nelimarkka leads the Helsinki Social Computing Group, an interdisciplinary group examining both computers and society. They explore digital democracy and politics in the digital era as well as computational techniques in social sciences, especially workflows and connections between social science theories and code. He is affiliated with the Faculty of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, Aalto University and Futurice, a Finnish software consultancy. He is about to publish a new computational social science text book Computational Thinking and Social Science: Combining Programming, Methodologies and Fundamental Concepts via SAGE Publishing.Speakers
Teaching Assistants
Sippo Rossi
Sippo Rossi is a doctoral researcher at Copenhagen Business School’s Department of Digitalization. His research focuses on misinformation and the negative societal effects of social media and he has recently been working on projects related to social bots and AI-generated social media content.Participants
Leila Gharavi
Leila Gharavi is a doctoral researcher in Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. In her PhD journey, Leila will mainly detect human disposition towards natural and biophysical environment, based on a social psychological theory, taking humans’ textual footprints over the years as data.
Faeze Ghorbanpour
Faeze Ghorbanpour is a research assistant at Sharif University of Technology, Iran. Her research focuses on analyzing social media and detecting fake news. Faeze's research interests include natural language processing, computational social sciences, and digital humanities. She received her master's degree from Sharif University in computer engineering and currently works for an artificial intelligence company in Iran as a machine learning specialist.
Armin Sauermann
Armin Sauermann is a researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. He recently completed his Sociology Masters at the University of Potsdam and will pursue his PhD. Armin analyzes large-scale observational data and is learning to collect and analyze internet-based data to study group processes and political extremism.
Jan Sodoge
Jan Sodoge is a doctoral researcher at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research working on the socio-economic dimensions of drought through text mining and participatory modeling
Elida Izani
Elida Izani is a doctoral student in the Sociology department at Stockholm University. Her research focuses on the alignment between ideological beliefs and lifestyle preferences. She investigates this topic by using a combination of qualitative and computational methods.
Jon Järviniemi
Jon Järviniemi is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on analyzing the development of populist political communication across party lines and on different political arenas. Furthermore, he is interested in what may have triggered the usage of populist communication among political actors.
Chaewon Yun
Chaewon Yun is a master’s student in Computational Social Systems in RWTH Aachen. She worked as a software engineer in Samsung Electronics after studying Political Science and International Relations at Yonsei University. Current research interests include the impact of learning algorithms and building democratic community in digital space.
Maria Litova
Maria Litova is a research assistant at the Centre for Social Data Science, University of Helsinki, Finland. She got her first Master’s degree in Sociology and currently is a Master’s student at the University of Helsinki with major in Social Data Science. Maria is interested in natural language processing, machine learning, healthcare and medical data analysis, youth research and well-being issues.
Antero Olakivi
Antero Olakivi, D. Soc.Sc., is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, in the Centre of Excellence in Research on Ageing and Care. Olakivi’s research interests deal with intersecting inequalities in everyday life, especially in the context of care and care work, and with the methodology of social sciences.
Brooke Molokach
Brooke Molokach is a PhD student at the University of Delaware, researching the narrative features of political communication and societal fragmentation. Her interests include network dynamics, agent-based modeling, and natural language processing. Brooke holds an MA in International Affairs from American University and a BA from Yale University.
Iuliia Smirnova
Iuliia Smirnova just completed her master's degree and holds a BA in political science from the St. Petersburg State University. She uses qualitative research methods such as comparative analysis, traditional document analysis and case study method to explore civil and political education, political culture, public policy and Russian politics.
Katri Sarkio
Katri Sarkio is a doctoral researcher in Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her dissertation focuses on educational leadership, organizational culture, and innovative learning environments. She holds LSc in Digital Economy and MSc in Computer Science. Before, she worked inter alia in EIT Digital innovation ecosystem on educational development.
Xin Zhou
Xin Zhou is a master's student in Political Communication at the University of Gothenburg. After receiving his Bachelor's in Journalism in China, he had several years working in a business media as a journalist. His current research interests are propaganda, censorship, and political polarization. He usually prefers to explore this field mainly using quantitative research and computational methods.
Rachel Bryant
Rachel has a Master of Public Administration and Nonprofit Management, and is currently pursuing a second Master's in Social Data Science at the University of Helskinki. She has worked for several international organizations and NGOs in the US, Germany, and Finland. She's interested in using data to help organizations solve different problems in the public sector.