Dphil In Social Data Science

About the course The multidisciplinary DPhil in Social Data Science provides opportunity for highly qualified students to undertake cutting- edge research focused on using unstructured heterogeneous data about human behaviour in a theoretically informed manner, thereby advancing our understanding of social processes. Social traces - often generated digitally from, for example, social media, communications platforms, devices, sensors/wearables, and mobile phones - offer a way to accumulate new large-scale data, in addition to existing archives and repositories that have been converted to digital formats. Such data can be put to work helping us understand old and new foundational problems of crucial interest to the social sciences, industry, and policy-makers including social, economic and political behaviour, interpersonal relationships, market design, group formation, identity, international movement, ethics and responsible ways to enhance the social value of data, and many other topics. The growing field of social data science involves developing the science of these social data. creating viable datasets out of messy, real world data; and developing the tools and techniques to analyse them to tell us something about the world, through explanation, prediction and the testing of interventions. In this way, social data science offers a data science where the data relates to individual and social behaviour and a theoretically informed social science with generation and analysis of real-time transactional data at its centre. Assessment All students will be initially admitted to the status of Probationer Research Student (PRS). Within a maximum of six terms as a full-time PRS student or eight terms as a part-time PRS student, you will be expected to apply for transfer of status from Probationer Research Student to DPhil status. This application is normally made by the fourth term for full-time students and by the sixth term for part-time students. A successful transfer of status from PRS to DPhil status will require satisfactory completion of such lectures, seminars and classes (with a mark of 50 or higher) as the Graduate Studies Committee of the OII shall determine. Following successful transfer, students will need to apply for and gain confirmation of DPhil status to show that the work continues to be on track. This will need to be completed within nine terms of admission for full-time students and twelve terms of admission for part-time students. Graduate destinations Employers recognise the value of a degree from the University of Oxford, and graduates from our existing programmes have secured excellent positions in industry, government and NGOs. Alumni who have pursued academic careers have taken up research and teaching positions at the University of Oxford, Cornell University, University of Hong Kong, Imperial College London, Durham University, University of New South Wales, Coventry University, University of Leicester, University of Ottawa and Michigan State University. OII DPhil alumni also work in wide-range of organisations including The World Bank, Oxfam, Cisco, McKinsey and Google.