August 25 to September 7, 2024 | Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana
PLEASE READ THE INFORMATION ON THIS PAGE CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU APPLY.
Participation is open to PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and untenured faculty within five years of their PhD. There are no restrictions based on citizenship, country of study, or employment, but we will prioritise applicants from African countries. There is no registration fee for participating in SICSS-Accra, and most of the costs will be covered. The language of instruction will be English.
We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, fields of study, and countries within Africa. We strongly encourage women and other minority groups to apply. About 20 participants will be invited, and participants are expected to fully attend, participate, and engage in the entire program.
Participants with less experience with social science research will be expected to complete additional readings in advance of the Institute. Participants with less coding experience will be expected to complete a set of online learning modules on the R programming language. Students requiring this preparatory work will be supported by a teaching assistant who will hold online office hours two months before the Institute.
Applicants must submit the following documents:
Applications/expressions of interest will be accepted from April 13, 2024, until on May 20, 2024. In order to be guaranteed full consideration, all application materials must be submitted online. Applications that are not complete by the deadline may not receive full consideration. Conditional offers will be sent by May 31, 2024, while unconditional offers to participate in the program will be sent by July 22, 2024.
Inquiries can be sent to sicss@rips-ug.edu.gh
After the application due date, the organizers will review all applications based on:
Subsequently, all the applications will be ranked, and the **top 30 applications ** will be selected for a conditional offer. Based on the proficiency in R-programming demonstrated in their application materials, all conditionally selected applicants will be enrolled in a coding bootcamp.
Applicants will be given six weeks to boost their programming skills and schedule an interview with the organizers. During the interview, the candidates will be expected to demonstrate a high level of proficiency in R-programming or good progress. All applicants will then be scored and ranked by the panel, and unconditional offers will be sent to top candidates during this phase. Only the applicants who are sent an unconditional offer will be formally invited to attend and participate in the summer institute.
The summer institute is targeted at doctoral students, post-docs, and early career researchers interested in applying computational methods to address critical challenges on the African continent. Given the limited amount of funding available, we will only select excellent candidates with the potential to make the most out of the programme and candidates who have the potential to advance the field of computational social science on the African continent.
SICSS-Accra is planned to be an entry-level programme in computational social science. We will lay a solid foundation for computational social science during the summer institute through several activities such as invited lectures, research happy hour, tutorials and participant-led group research projects. You can read our experience organizing SICSS-Covenant 2022 here: https://sicss.io/2022/post-mortem#covenant-university
Some previous coding experience is highly recommended to make the most out of the summer institute. However, this should not discourage you from applying as we aim to enrol all accepted participants with limited coding experience in our coding bootcamp. During the bootcamp, we will introduce you to R-programming and support you in enriching your programming skills before the summer institute.
There is no registration cost for participating in the summer institute. Furthermore, thanks to our generous sponsor, the John Templeton Foundation, we will be able to cover meals for all accepted participants.
Yes, but not at the same time. For example, you can apply to SICSS-Accra, 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 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.
You can host a partner location of the Summer Institutes of Computational Social Science (SICSS) at your university, company, NGO, or government agency.