What drew you to apply for the SweCSS Visiting Fellows Program, and how does it align with your research interests?
When I first came across SweCSS, I was quite impressed and pleased to find so many researchers united by a shared interest in the computational social sciences under one center. I come from a department where most folks diverged from me in terms of research and methodological interests so I was excited by the prospect of working with researchers who could see eye-to-eye with me and ask the types of questions that would push my work further. As a practitioner of social network analysis, textual analysis, and mathematical sociology, I feel at home here.
What do you hope to gain from your time as a Post-doc at SweCSS?
Fresh from a doctoral program, I am hoping to spend my time at SweCSS developing my own research agenda. With the support of the researchers and initiatives at IAS and IDA, I feel confident that I can spend my postdoc honing the skills necessary for a future professorship.
What do you hope to contribute as a Post-doc at SweCSS?
I’m hoping that my unique background as a disaster sociologist can bring a new line of research questions to SweCSS while my technical background helps strengthen the methodological interests of SweCSS. Furthermore, I aim to represent SweCSS by acting as a bridge between IAS and IDA, helping to foster fruitful conversations and collaborations between two strong institutes at LiU.
What are you most looking forward to about starting your Post-doc at SweCSS?
I am greatly looking forward to engaging with a group of researchers who are like-minded in terms of analytical techniques, yet diverse in terms of substantive interests. I know this will offer fresh, new perspectives on the work that I do. I am also excited to expand my networks through SweCSS, which I hope will lead to me finding my future coauthors and lifelong colleagues.
On a more personal note, it will be quite interesting experiencing my first “real” winter as someone coming from Florida and Southern California.
What advice would you give to someone considering applying to the program?
Even if your substantive interests or your background deviates from those of researchers already at SweCSS, I would recommend applying as long as you have an interest in applying computational social science techniques! In my experience, the best part of having an interest that is quite different from everyone else’s is that we can still communicate in the shared language of CSS and “translate” our problems across different research contexts. So far, I have already had many opportunities to think about my problems through different angles, adding depth to my research.
