Why Graduate Studies?

Because I’m curious, and because I think there’s something important to be learned and acted on here. The goal is to research how we parse the world and make knowledge of it, how we organize this knowledge, how we derive insights from it, how we can collectively and justly make decisions based on what we learn, and how we can build institutions that protect and support this process. It’s a deeply interdisciplinary research program. It includes coursework in data modeling and knowledge representation; information management and engineering; inference and analytics; and game theory, social choice theory, and radical democracy. It also includes critical theoretical work on the pitfalls and power dynamics within these endeavors to make sure that I don’t get too myopically, and dangerously, utopian about the ability to achieve world peace through better deliberative methods, mechanism design, and information management alone. It’s also there to make sure that I can’t pretend modeling reality is a value-neutral and apolitical act; that we are not constantly in danger of enshrining our biases in the way we choose to measure the world and shove it into categories.

Why a DIY PHD?

Because fellowships don’t pay enough to support a family.

The Curriculum

The curriculum is a fairly standard course of study in computational social science, but with additional course work in data system management and design, and greater philosophical depth. The first section is a full data science curriculum, and the second is a social scientific curriculum focused on analytical methods and collective agency and decision-making.

On Knowledge, Information, and Data

• Data Science I - Data Analysis Foundations
• Data Science II - Data Management Foundations
• Data Science III - Bayesian Statistical Analysis
• Data Science IV - Causal Inference
• Data Science V - Machine Learning and Data Mining
• Data Science VI - Text Analysis and Natural Language Processing
• Data Science VII - Small Language Models
• Data Science VIII - Advanced Domain Modeling and Knowledge Representation
• Sociology of Data Science I - Algorithms and Society
• Sociology of Data Science II - Knowledge Creation and Power

On Society, Interaction, and Institutions

• Sociology I - Foundations
• Sociology II - Group Agency and Institutions
• Sociology III - Deliberation and Democracy
• Sociology IV - Philosophy of Social Science
• Analytical Sociology I - Foundational Methodology
• Analytical Sociology II - Introductory Game Theory
• Analytical Sociology III - Networks and Connectivity
• Analytical Sociology IV - Social Choice Theory
• Analytical Sociology V - Modeling and Simulation of Complex Systems