Faculty of ArtWhy CCSS ?
The Centre for Computational Social Science (CCSS) was created to facilitate computational social science research and training within the Faculty of Arts at UBC, including faculty and students at UBC who work with big data and computational methods to better understand society, and those that examine ways social systems impact, and are impacted by, data and computation. The goal of the centre is to provide an intellectual and pedagogical hub for faculty and students engaged in cutting edge computational scholarship and training, fostering interdisciplinary scholarship within the Faculty of Arts (FoA) and beyond, and providing leadership and guidance in the continued development of computational research and training in the FoA. More specifically, we seek to:
– bring together a dispersed set of faculty across disciplines (and Faculties) that engage in often highly related questions to better exchange research ideas and develop joint programs;
– coordinate training programs in computational methods and tools, including computer programming languages such as Python, R as well as other more specialized programs, in a way that addresses the specific ways social scientists use these tools and also centers a critical perspective and on how these tools are impacting society;
– create a united voice to advocate for institutional resources that meet the unique needs of computational social scientists, including storage options and/or data security protocols for hosting data with strict privacy restrictions.
Broader Rational
In the blink of an eye our social and cultural world has metamorphosed, with technological innovations rapidly transforming our social world – from how and with whom we interact, to how we identify, how we shop and how we play and create. Social scientists, who are dedicated to studying most every facet of the human condition are scrambling to keep up with the explosive growth of new or “big data” opportunities and challenges. We are building spaces to allow faculty and students to share resources, access specialized training, and build intellectual communities to meet the challenges of research in the 21st century.