Istanbul as a regional computational social science hub
By Akın Ünver and Yunus Emre Tapan
Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS) Istanbul was originally conceived in Oxford and Helsinki. Our co-organizer, Akin Unver, and the principal data scientist tutor, Ahmet Kurnaz of SICSS-Istanbul met at Oxford University in 2017 during their joint research project on how best to use data science to gather data from hard-to-access regions such as disaster areas or war zones. From this project arose the need to launch a data science summer school in Istanbul. Our teaching assistant (Yunus Emre Tapan) was then a participant at the SICSS-Helsinki, run by our other co-organizer, Matti Nelimarkka, and also discussed the possibility of launching an Istanbul chapter. Later in 2018, Akin and Emre met at the International Studies Association annual meeting for the first time and agreed to launch SICSS-Istanbul.
Participants at SICSS-Istanbul 2019.
This year, SICSS-Istanbul will run its third summer institute; like last year, we’ll conduct the event online via Zoom due to COVID restrictions. Once COVID conditions dissipate, we are really looking forward to running SICSS-Istanbul 2022 in-house, in its beautiful location at Kadir Has University, right at the edge of the city’s historic imperial peninsula. In our first and only in-house event, this location was a clear advantage as we could gather for lectures and exercises in the morning and afternoon sessions, then break out into exploring the city’s many marvels at night. The Bosphorus boat trip was a particular highlight of our summer program!
The success of the prep module means SICSS-Istanbul 2021 will run for a whole month in June
In 2021, SICSS-Istanbul will be longer than usual — a whole month (June 1-30), instead of the regular two weeks. Last year, we experimented with ‘pre-SICSS’, a programming and reading-intensive prep module, to bring those with more modest coding skills or theoretical backgrounds up to speed with the rest of the cohort. Through those two weeks, we ask the participants to complete a self-guided R refresher course and a compilation of fundamental texts in computational social science. We found that these extra two weeks go a long way to harmonize participants' programming and social theory foundations and ensure a better match for the whole cohort when they enter the group work phase.
Cross-discipline focus
In the last two years, our site was slightly more popular among political science and international relations applicants, in line with the site co-organizers’ fields of specialization. Although we considered launching a ‘PolSci/IR dedicated SICSS’ program last year, we ultimately decided to retain the open-field nature of our site as participants from sociology, history, and law backgrounds have consistently produced excellent papers in 2019 and 2020. Our graduates have presented their SICSS-Istanbul work at the American Sociological Association, American Political Science Association, and International Studies Association, among many other conferences.
SICSS-Istanbul 2019 participants
Applicants from Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia
Although we expected applicants to be highly clustered in Turkey, or Turks living abroad, we received an encouraging diversity of applicants from Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. To that end, Istanbul is well on its way to becoming a computational social science hub for the wider region; either for those who like to spend time in Istanbul, engage in a more region-specific research focus (linguistically or topically), or try a new site after participating in others. Either way, SICSS-Istanbul is open to applicants from all regions and specialties and we certainly hope to meet with you either this year or (hopefully) in-house in the coming years!
The deadline for 2021 program applications is on 22 February.
About
Akın Ünver is an associate professor of International Relations at Kadir Has University, specialising in conflict research, computational methods and digital crisis communication. He is the Resident Fellow of Cyber Research Program at the Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Research (EDAM), a Research Associate at the Center for Technology and Global Affairs, Oxford University and a Senior Research Fellow at GUARD (Global Urban Analytics for Resilient Defence) at the Alan Turing Institute.
Yunus Emre Tapan is a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at Kadir Has University. He has a Master's degree in Middle East Studies from Middle Eastern Technical University and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Bogazici University. His research sits at the intersection of data science and social sciences. He specializes in social network analysis and computational text analysis to study online extremist communities and non-state actors with a particular focus on how they radicalize.