Date:  Thursday, 5 July 2018
Time: 9.15am – 10.30am

• Big Data Research in the Social Sciences
  Presenters: Professor Nick Allum (University of Essex, Department of Sociology)
  Ms Katie Metzler (SAGE Publishing)
• Programming Skills for Social Scientists
  Presenter: Dr James Allen-Robertson (University of Essex
• Data Science and Computational Social Science for Knowledge Societies
  Presenter: Professor Maria Fasli (University of Essex)
• Data Science for the Public Sector
  Presenter: Professor Slava Mikhaylov (University of Essex)
• Discussion/Open Forum
  Presenters: Professor Maria Fasli (University of Essex)
  Ms Katie Metzler (SAGE Publishing)

Part of the ESRC Research Methods Festival 2018

These 15-minute presentations will bring together computer and social scientists from the University of Essex to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing researchers applying methods from the fast-developing fields of natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to social science problems. The promise of “big data”, along with the affordances of new technology and advances in computational methods have transformed fields such as biology and astronomy, but take up within the social sciences has been slower. This session will introduce examples of computational methods that have been applied in social science problems and discuss challenges and opportunities.