This course is appropriate for researchers and other professionals, from any discipline, who would like to apply mixed methods or use an innovative method for their research into complex social systems. Day 1 will show you what computational modelling can do. Day 2 is a hands on course, which will give assistance to anyone who is thinking of designing and building their first simulation model. It provides an introduction to designing, specifying and coding simple models, and supervised practice. The course will also briefly review other parts of a modelling methodology, including formulating a research question, validation, and reporting conclusions.

Participants also will have the chance to attend a Centre for Research in Social Simulation lunchtime seminar by Steward Robinson, Professor of Operational Research from Warwick Business School.

Entry level:
No prior knowledge of modelling needed to attend the course

The presenters:
Edmund Chattoe-Brown’s research addresses decisions with significant social components. Flows of information/influence through networks are obvious examples. He is interested in how agent-based modelling can systematically be informed by data routinely collected in social science, steering between data free “toy” models and “number crunching” for existing theories.

Corinna Elsenbroich is a Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Surrey. Her research background is in philosophy of science and computer science. Her research interests are the methodology of simulation in the social sciences and the interrelations between reasoning, decision making and action which will here be applied to the phenomenon of social norms.

Nigel Gilbert is professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey and editor of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. He has written on the methodology of agent-based modelling and authored two textbooks on social simulation, as well as directing a number of large projects that used agent-based models.

James Kitts is an Assistant Professor in Management at Columbia University. He models the dynamics of social norms and social networks – including convergence, factionalism, and polarization – and is an area editor for Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory. He is also active in teaching social simulation and manages www.socdynamics.org for students and instructors of models in social dynamics.

Christopher Watts is Research Fellow in the Centre for Research in Social Simulation (CRESS), University of Surrey. His PhD research at Warwick Business School applied simulation modelling to sociological and organisational theories. His research interests include Operational Research, simulation modelling, complexity and the philosophy of organisation.

Registration
Please visit: http://www.simian.ac.uk/courses