The Department of Sociology and Human Geography (ISS) is celebrating its 30th anniversary and, on this occasion, invited sociologist Christopher Bail from Duke University to give a jubilee seminar on The future of computational social science.
An inspiring glimpse into the future
– I’m very pleased that we were able to mark ISS’s 30th anniversary with such a seminar. I honestly feel that my head is spinning from all the impressions, and that it’s quite overwhelming to take in the potential of social research that draws on very large datasets, says the Head of Department at ISS, Anniken Hagelund.
Her own background is in qualitative research, and she finds it exciting to see the possibilities of linking traditional small-scale analysis with the analysis of enormous bodies of text.
– We can get help with tasks that would otherwise take far too much time, but this also opens up opportunities to combine several methods, which I’m keen to explore further.
– ISS is a broadly composed department. My impression is that today’s seminar provided inspiration and new ideas across different research traditions, she concludes.
