63 | Inside an Initiative to Diversify the Field of Computational Social Science

On this episode of On the Evidence, we focus on a creative initiative designed to build a more diverse pipeline of researchers who use methods and tools from data science and social science. Earlier this year, Howard University and Mathematica sponsored a free, two-week training for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and beginning faculty in the fields of data science and social science. The training was part of a broader instructional program held at 20 sites across the globe called the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (SICSS). The Howard-Mathematica SICSS was unique in that it was the first site to be hosted by a historically Black college or university (Howard) and the first to focus on anti-Black racism and inequity. This episode will include the following guests: • Nicole Jenkins, an assistant professor at Howard University in the Department of Sociology and Criminology whose ethnographic research focuses on studying the experiences of Black women in institutions • Jeremy Prim, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Davis whose research focuses on race, policing, exclusionary discipline, and educational outcomes • Felix Owusu, a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at Harvard whose dissertation research centers on racial disparities in the criminal legal system • Naniette Coleman, founder and lead organizer of the SICSS-Howard/Mathematica and a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley • Matt Salganik, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who is a member of Mathematica’s Board of Directors and the author of Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age • Akira Bell, a senior vice president and the chief information officer at Mathematica • Wayne A.I. Frederick, president of Howard University and a surgical oncologist whose medical research focuses on narrowing racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in cancer-care outcomes • Paul Decker, president and chief executive officer of Mathematica Read an op-ed in The Hechinger Report by Wayne A.I. Frederick and Paul Decker, the presidents of Howard University and Mathematica, respectively, about the need to increase diversity in research and analytics: https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-a-lack-of-diversity-in-research-and-analytics-is-not-just-unethical-it-is-dangerous/ Read more about the launch of the SICSS-Howard/Mathematica: https://mathematica.org/events/howard-university-mathematica-computational-social-science-institute-on-countering-anti-black-racism A full transcript of the episode is available here: mathematica.org/blogs/inside-an-initiative-to-diversify-the-field-of-computational-social-science