Deadline: March 31 2022
, The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) and The Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) will sponsor the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, to be held at JIAS in a hybrid format*. The purpose of the Summer Institute is to bring together postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in critical computational social science. The Summer Institute is for both social scientists (broadly conceived) and data scientists (broadly conceived).
The SICSS-JIAS/IPATC instructional programme will involve lectures, group problem sets and participant-led research projects. Topics covered include text as data, website scraping, digital field experiments, machine learning and ethics. There will also be outside speakers who conduct computational social science research in a variety of settings and contexts. Speakers will touch on topics such as artificial intelligence in Africa, equity, ethics, decolonisation and algorithmic justice. There will be ample opportunities for participants to discuss their ideas and research with the organisers, other participants and visiting speakers. Because we are committed to open and reproducible research, all materials created by faculty and students for the Summer Institute will be released open source.
Participation is restricted to registered masters and doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers and researchers working outside of academia. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and fields of study, especially applicants from groups currently under-represented in computational social science. Approximately 20 participants will be invited, and participants are expected to fully attend and participate in the entire three-week programme.
Eligibility
Participation is restricted to masters and doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers and researchers working outside of academia. However, there are no restrictions based on citizenship, country of study or country of employment. Approximately 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) creative and critical perspectives in computational social science
3) contributions to public goods, such as creating open source software, curating public dataset and creating educational opportunities for others
4) likelihood to benefit from participation
5) likelihood to contribute to the educational experience of other participants
6) potential to spread computational social science to new intellectual communities and areas of research.
We are also keen on applicants who have an interest in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D). Further, when making our evaluations, we attempt to account for an applicant’s career stage and previous educational opportunities.
