Computational Social Science Linköping University

Overview

The master’s programme in Computational Social Science offered at Linköping University trains students to apply computational methods to analyse large, complex datasets related to human social behaviour, and to arrive at theoretically and empirically grounded explanations of social outcomes such as ethnic segregation in schools, income inequality, firm growth and survival, political change, cultural diffusion and myriad others. 

In the process, students are inducted into multidisciplinary domains of research in the social sciences that connect sociology, political science, economics, management science, and related disciplines with technical innovations in mathematics, statistics, and computer science.

The programme provides:

• Grounding in the philosophy of social science research, with special attention paid to the scientific potential, practical limits, and ethical risks of growing troves of digital data describing human behaviours;

• Theoretically and empirically guided understandings of human decision making and cognitive processes, including cognitive biases, that guide choices and social interactions;

• A framework for connecting micro-level social actions of individuals, families, firms, and other social actors, and macro-level social outcomes like segregation, inequality, cultural evolution, and industrial change;

• Formal training in key methodological components of computational social science, including traditional statistical methods, network analysis, computer simulation, agent-based modelling, web-scraping, and machine learning;

• Practical skills to implement computationally intensive social science research designs using appropriate methods;

• A broad background in theories and empirical findings in key substantive areas of academic research in the social sciences, with connections to non-academic applications.

Career opportunities

The dual skills you develop in social theory and data analysis are in high demand in public and private sectors. Graduates will be qualified for a number of roles: data analyst, marketing analyst, sales researcher, user experience researcher, policy analyst, etc. After graduation, you will also qualify for many PhD programmes.