Institute for Research in the Social Sciences
IRiSS In The News
Annual Conference on Computational Social Science
Save the date. On January 11, 2013, IRiSS will host an all-day Conference on Computational Social Science. The first conference held last June attracted over 130 faculty and graduate students from 19 departments and schools throughout the university. A schedule for the 2013 conference will be posted later this month.
Presentations from the last conference are available online at the CSS-2012 conference website.
REP Welcomes New Program Director
IRiSS is pleased to welcome Carolyn Ybarra (Stanford PhD in Anthropology) as the new program director of the Research Experience Program. Ybarra succeeds Lynn Chin (Stanford PhD in Sociology), who served as the program director from its founding in 2005. Chin left Stanford to accept a position as assistant professor at Washington and Lee University.
The Research Experience Program is a collaboration with Foothill Community College. REP introduces college students to experimental research in the social sciences. For additional information, see the Research Experience Program website.
IRiSS Awards First Computational Social Science Fellowships
The Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS) is pleased to announce the awardees of Stanford’s first competition for graduate student Fellowships in Computational Social Science. The three winners are Henning Piezunka (Management Science and Engineering), Bertrand Schneider, (School of Education and Computer Science) and Rebecca Weiss (Communication).
The fellowship program is a central part of IRiSS’ initiative to develop high quality research in the area of computational social science. This initiative is led by the founding director of Computational Social Science at Stanford, Daniel McFarland. The initiative entails a certificate program, summer workshop, bi-annual conference, and now a student fellowship program. The student fellowships provide graduate students with salary and tuition support, and are intended to promote interdisciplinary research efforts using computational techniques to analyze big data and address important social problems. Students were required to identify faculty advisors from two or more departments.
The three funded research projects are:
“Benevolent Rejection,” Henning Piezunka
Chris Thomsen, IRiSS executive director, says the graduate students will be formally recognized at the next Stanford Computational Social Science conference to be held on January 11, 2013.
Snipp Assumes New Role with IRiSS
May 21, 2012. Karen Cook announced the appointment of C. Matthew Snipp as deputy director of the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences. Snipp, who is the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Humanities and Sciences, has worked with the Institute since its founding in 2004. He will continue to serve as director of the Institute’s Secure Data Center, providing access to microdata of the federal government through the U.S Census Bureau’s network of research data centers.
Snipp, an expert in social stratification, is the former director of Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. In his new role with the Institute he will help define and develop the Institute’s support for research computing in the social sciences, and provide leadership for many of the interdisciplinary research projects and centers at the Institute. This includes his contributions to the study of social mobility, in collaboration with Professor David Grusky, director of the Institute’s Center on Poverty and Inequality.
For nearly ten years, Snipp served as an appointed member of the Census Bureau’s Racial and Ethnic Advisory Committee. He also has been involved with several advisory working groups evaluating the 2000 census, three National Academy of Science panels focused on the 2010 and 2020 censuses. He also has served as a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the Centers for Disease Control and the National Center for Health Statistics as well as an elected member of the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research’s Council. He is currently serving on the National Institute of Child Health and Development’s Population Science Subcommittee. Snipp holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
New Certificate in Cultures, Minds & Medicines
This spring, a new graduate certificate in Culture, Minds and Medicines will be offered through IRiSS. Tanya Lurhmann, the Howard H. and Jessie T. Watkins University Professor in the department of Anthropology, will serve as the director of the program. She is joined by five faculty from three departments who will serve on the steering committee. Luhrmann reported that 40 graduate students have been participating in a workshop since the beginning of the year, featuring speakers from Medical Anthropology, Cultural Psychology, and Medicine. Read more at Cultures, Minds & Medicines.
2012 Stanford Summer Institute in Political Psychology (SIPP), July 15-Aug. 4
SIPP is a three-week intensive training program introducing graduate students and professionals to the world of political psychology scholarship. Special pricing and course credit is available for Stanford students. On-line applications are now being accepted. For details, visit the SIPP website.
IRiSS scholar presents East Palo Alto school transfer program findings
How far can school choice programs go in leveling the playing field? Insights to the academic and social effects of a local desegregation program on transfer students were presented by Kendra Bischoff at a January 2012 special meeting of the Palo Alto Board of Education, as reported in Palo Alto Online.
Bischoff, whose work at the IRiSS Secure Data Center helped facilitate the findings, focuses on the causes and consequences of racial and economic segregation in neighborhoods and schools, the effect of school context on student outcomes, and civic engagement among disadvantaged youth.
PACS Grants for Student Research
The Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) awards small grants to undergraduate and graduate Stanford students who are pursuing research in philanthropy or civil society, for projects such as undergraduate honors theses, master's students capstone projects and doctoral student research.
Applications for Winter Quarter proposals are due Monday, February 6. For details, visit the PACS website.
Praise for Occupy
American National Election Studies (ANES) co-director Gary Segura weighs in on the significance of the Occupy movement in the Boston Review.
New Certificate in Computational Social Science
IRiSS is offering a new certificate in computational social science (CSS). The certificate will provide graduate students in social science with intellectual scaffolding and a curricular framework through which they can take computationally challenging classes in natural language processing, network science and data visualization. For details on the certificate or how to apply, visit the CSS webpage.
