International School in Computational Social Sciences in Uruguay 

August, 2023. With the objective of establishing a first theoretical and practical approach to computational and data science tools applied to social research, the International School in Computational Social Sciences seeks to train those involved in the use of computational tools for the analysis of social data.

Organized jointly by the Millennium Institute Fundamento de los Datos (IMFD-Chile), the Centro Interdisciplinario en Ciencia de Datos y Aprendizaje Automático (CICADA-CSIC/Udelar ) and the Unidad de Métodos y Acceso a Datos (UMAD-FCS/Udelar), the International School in Computational Social Sciences will be held from Monday, October 9 to Friday, October 13, 2023 at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of the Republic of Uruguay.

"With this school, we want those who participate to have a first theoretical and practical approach to computational tools and data science applied to social research," says Camila Diaz, executive director of the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data."As IMFD, we have experience in interdisciplinary work that combines social sciences with data science, we have developed research and application projects in which the combination of knowledge and techniques allows us to develop work that represents a great contribution to all areas and the development of new methodologies," she adds. 

The contents of the school are framed within the field ofcomputational social sciences.Although it is an area with a long history, it is currently facing new challenges oriented to the dialogue between social research and the digital era, both in terms of theoretical reflection on the one hand, and methodological/technical reflection on the other. The intersection of social research with other disciplinary fields such as data science, engineering and computing opens up new possibilities for the social sciences in the study of traditional social problems, but incorporating and innovating in methodological and technical terms.

The interdisciplinary perspective also appears as central in computational social sciences, since it incorporates skills from other disciplines, such as programming or the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) models, in order to contribute, for example, in the management of large volumes of data (numerical, textual, spatial) to answer questions of the social sciences, but from an innovative and comprehensive approach to social behavior.

The activity has 40 free places, will be taught in classroom format at the Universidad de la República, Montevideo, and is aimed at master's and doctoral students or professionals in Social Sciences or related areas, who wish to use computational tools for the analysis of social data. Students of Computer Science who wish to deepen their knowledge related to the social area may also apply. 

 

Contents: 

Data-intensive societies and social research

Juan Pablo LunaProfessor at the Institute of Political Science and the School of Government of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and researcher at the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data.

Manual and automated methods for textual data analysis

Sebastián ValenzuelaDirector of Research and Creation of the Communications Faculty of the Pontificia Universidad Católica, Principal Investigator of the Millennium Nucleus and Inequalities and Digital Opportunities and president of the Scientific Panel of the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE), and researcher at the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data.

Magdalena SaldañaAssociate Professor at the Communications Faculty of the Pontificia Universidad Católica, alternate director of the Millennium Nucleus for the Study of Politics, Public Opinion and Media in Chile (MEPOP), and researcher at the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data (IMFD).

Natural Language Processing in the last decade: from Shannon to GPT 4

Felipe BravoAssistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chile and Researcher at the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data.

Textual data modeling and visualization

Natalia da SilvaNatalia da Silva, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Statistics - FCEA of the University of the Republic (Udelar-IESTA).

Nicolás SchmidtAssistant Professor of the Department of Political Science and of the Methods and Data Access Unit of the School of Social Sciences of the University of the Republic (Udelar).

Elina GómezAssistant Professor at the Methods and Data Access Unit of the School of Social Sciences of the University of the Republic (Udelar).

Graph Database/Network Science

Juan ReutterJuan Reutter, Associate Professor of the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Mathematical and Computational Engineering of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Lorena Etcheverry (INCO-Fing), Associate Professor of the Institute of Computer Science of the School of Engineering (FING-Udelar)

Enrollment in: Registration Form International School of Computational Social Sciences in Uruguay