Sociologist. Quantitativist. University of Neuchâtel.
We’re hiring a postdoc to research human migration and mobility.
You have a PhD in migration, sociology, demography, economics, public health, or similar (max. 5 years since PhD). You have quantitative skills (p.ex. causal inference, survey experiments, big data, text-as-data), and you’re hungry to develop your own research.
Excellent French and English needed.
Job advert, deadline 30 April 2023
We’re hiring a postdoc to research human migration and mobility.
You have a PhD in migration, sociology, demography, economics, public health, or similar (max. 5 years since PhD). You have quantitative skills (p.ex. causal inference, survey experiments, big data, text-as-data), and you’re hungry to develop your own research.
Excellent French and English needed.
Job advert, deadline 30 April 2023
For the project “The COVID generation: Identifying risks and protective factors for young people’s pathways through the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland”, the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS) and the Institute of Sociology at University of Neuchâtel are recruiting:
– A post-doctoral researcher (80-100%) in Lausanne
– A scientific collaborator (50%) in Neuchâtel
Application deadline: 10th of December.
Daniel Burnier and colleagues have just published a cartoon to introduce sociology as a discipline using a cartoon. The cartoon is available in French.
The cartoon is both a personal account of the main author, and a general introduction to the discipline. Contrary to PhD Comics, this book isn’t about academia, but much more a reflection about what sociology can contribute to the world — the usefulness of the discipline. This introspective focus on what the discipline can do for society more broadly may be something sociologists like doing, but the book doesn’t stop there.
We get an introduction to several (male) key thinkers and many sociological topics like gender roles, social movements, or poverty. I was happy to see the key thinkers banished to the appendix because I’m still struggling with any presentation of a discipline by individuals rather than their thoughts.
Given that the story is told by a male protagonist, I was glad to see an explicit section on female sociologists — but honestly it felt a bit like an afterthought. Perhaps the (personal) storyline made it difficult to do otherwise?
The kind of sociology presented is sociological theory and qualitative research. While this is certainly part of sociology, many of us use experimental and quantitative approaches — and do not struggle that much to see usefulness in what we do (perhaps the occasional reflexivity would do no harm in those quarters…).
Despite these comments, I did enjoy this cartoon and honestly, there’s potential for an English version…
Looking to get started with data science, but scared it’d be too complicated? There’s a new book by Elena Llaudet and Kosuke Imai that will get you covered. Data Analysis for Social Science: A Friendly and Practical Introduction is now available as an e-book, and it truly delivers what the title claims: friendly and practical. It’s also up-to-date, with a focus on experimental data and causal inference much more than on multiple regression analysis. I don’t think I’ve seen a more accessible introduction to R and Rstudio — cheat-sheets included!
Didier Ruedin 