Short outline:

Agent-based models [ABMs] are becoming increasingly attractive in the social sciences. ABMs are used to simulate the emergence of complex macro phenomena based on individual actions. Such simulation can be integrated in the pipeline of data-driven research in various ways.
Before data collection or analysis, ABMs can help operationalise theory and explore candidate explanations in preparation of subsequent empirical work; furthermore, simulation can identify key actors to investigate with quantitative as well as qualitative designs. After data analysis, simulation can help fill gaps or detail the causal inferences identified. On some occasions, sim-ulation may be the only way to retrieve data (in an ethically acceptable way) at all.
Because the researchers have full control over their ABM, they can monitor all cognitive pro-cesses of their agents and social they deem interesting in arbitrary granularity, while at the same time running virtually unlimited repetitions and parameter settings. Consequently, data from ABMs combines advantages of quantitative (large N) and qualitative (rich, detailed) data. However, simulation output is only meaningful if the simulated social system resembles the real world in the relevant respects. Thus, appropriate calibration and validation is key to successful research using ABMs.

The aim of this course is to provide epistemic and methodological background on Agent-Based Modelling and guide through the conceptual development of ABMs as well as their implemen-tation using the free software NetLogo [http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/]. Its program-ming language is intuitively accessible even without previous programming or computer science knowledge. Therefore, the tool is ideally suited for social scientists who aspire to use simulated data from ABMs to pilot or complement empirical data.

As a complement to NetLogo, we will discuss the implementation of ABMs in other program-ming languages such as Python, Julia, R or C++. Moreover, we will experiment with using Large Language Models to conceptualise and implement ABMs. With that you can integrate ABMs into their individual research pipelines.
 

After completion of this course, you will be able to...
- Conceptualise common types of ABMs and implement them in NetLogo.
- Understand and apply all major NetLogo commands.
- Know the fundamentals of implementing ABMs independent of programming language.
- Use Large Language Models as “collaborators” for defining and refining ABM concepts and implement these concepts in the programming language of your choice.
- Critically evaluate your and others’ ABMs in terms of internal and external validity.
- Identify potential use-cases of ABMs in your research settings.

Date & Time: 19.05.2025, 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. (s.t.) & 23.05.2025, 09:00 a.m. to 01:00 p.m. (s.t.)
 

Place:  BAGSS, Feldkirchenstraße 21, 96050 Bamberg, Room FG1/00.06
 

Registration

To register, please send an email to courses.bagss(at)uni-bamberg.de 

About the Trainer
Daniel Mayerhoffer is a BAGSS alumnus (Pillar 4, class of 2022) and now Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam. There, he teaches in the Bachelor Program Computational Social Science, is a member of the Institutions, Inequalities, and Life courses research group in Sociol-ogy, and an affiliate of the Data Science Centre.
Daniel uses Agent Based Simulation, among and in combination with other methods, to explain and predict complex socio-technical systems to enhance their governance. He applies Compu-tational Models mainly to questions in Economic Sociology, Collective Behaviour and Political Epistemology. Namely, he studies the perception of (economic) inequalities in homophilic net-works, and the resulting individual and collective actions. Furthermore, Daniel evaluates these models from an analytical and Philosophy of Science perspective.

Short Outline

This intensive 8-hour (6hrs in person + 2hrs asynchronous) course provides a comprehensive ground-ing in planning, conducting and reporting systematic literature reviews - an essential research method for synthesizing evidence in health sciences, social sciences and other fields. Designed for early career researchers, graduate students and professionals, the course combines lectures, interactive discus-sions and practical activities to ensure that participants gain both theoretical knowledge and practical expertise.
Participants will explore each step of the systematic review process, starting with the development of clear research questions using frameworks such as PICO, SPIDER or PCC. The course then moves on to creating robust and replicable search strategies, making effective use of Boolean operators and academic databases to ensure comprehensive coverage of the literature. Emphasis is placed on screening and selecting relevant studies using inclusion/exclusion criteria, systematically extracting and managing data, and critically appraising study quality.
The course also introduces participants to qualitative and quantitative synthesis techniques, including thematic synthesis and meta-analysis, with an emphasis on the interpretation and reporting of results according to PRISMA guidelines. Finally, the course also provides strategies for addressing common challenges such as publication bias, heterogeneity and methodological limitations to ensure high quality and impactful reviews.

Topics covered

• Understanding the meaning and process of systematic reviews
• Formulating clear research questions and inclusion/exclusion criteria using several frame-works
• Developing comprehensive search strategies across multiple databases
• Writing a detailed systematic review protocol
• Knowledge on how to register a systematic review protocol with appropriate registries (eg.Prospero, OSF)
• Screening and selection of relevant studies using defined criteria
• Extract and synthesise data from selected studies
• Critically appraise the quality of included studies using standardised tools
• Interpret and present the results of a systematic review
• Write a systematic review report according to PRISMA guidelines

• Introduction to AI-assisted systematic reviews using the innovative ASreview software, equip-ping participants with cutting-edge tools to improve efficiency and accuracy.
   

  Prerequisites

• Engage with 120 minutes of asynchronous materials, which may include recorded lectures,readings and interactive content.
• Actively participate in a 4hrs synchronous laboratory session that includes hands-on exercisesand discussions.
• Participate 60 minutes to independent learning activities in small groups, focusing on practi-cal applications of course concepts.
• Optionally attend a 60-minute office hour for personalised feedback and support.
   

Date & Time: 04 June 2025, 9.00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m. (s.t.)
 

Place:  BAGSS, Feldkirchenstraße 21, 96050 Bamberg, Room FG1/00.06
 

Registration

To register, please send an email to courses.bagss(at)uni-bamberg.de by Wednesday, May 14, 2025. Registration is mandatory. The number of participants is lim-ited to 16.

About the Trainer
Dr Liliana Abreu is a postdoctoral researcher in the Development Research Group at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz (Germany), where she has been working since 2019 doing research, teaching and supervising thesis. She holds a doctorate in Public Health from the University of Porto’s Medical School, Portugal. Her research integrates scientific investigation and human-itarian work, focusing on the prevention of violence against children, women and vulnerable populations. She is committed to implementing sustainable mental health interventions, with a particular focus on trauma, gender equality and mental health literacy. Liliana has extensive experience in designing and eval-uating complex public health interventions using rigorous research methods. She is also deeply passionate about rigorous research, the principles of open science and creating meaningful, positive impact through her work.

Short Outline
This workshop introduces sequence analysis (SA) for social science research. Originally devel-oped in biology and computer science, SA has gained traction in the social sciences for analyzing longitudinal data. Most applications study life course processes such as labor market careers, transitions to adulthood, or family formation. The workshop covers core SA techniques in depth and briefly introduces recent methodological advances. Topics include distance measures, clus-ter analysis, sequence visualization, and techniques for analyzing multidimensional sequences. All methods are demonstrated with hands-on examples using R.

Learning objective
By the end of the course participants should be able to apply a robust sequence analysis on their own, i.e. they should:
• know how to describe and visualize sequences with the TraMineR & ggseqplot pack-ages in R
• know how to use the outcomes from sequence analysis (distance matrices, measures of turbulence and complexity) in further analyses (e.g., cluster and regression analysis)

Requirements for participation
• basic knowledge in handling (longitudinal) data
• basic knowledge of quantitative methods (e.g., regression analysis)
• basic knowledge of R not necessary but helpful (e.g., inspecting, visualizing, transforming your data, extracting values from a table, sub-setting tables, calculating summary statistics, and deriving new variables). For an introduction to the basics, you might consider consult-ing Posit Recipes, the website of the book R for Data Science, or any other of the abundant
free introductory material for R & RStudio on the web

You will find the course useful if:
• you work with longitudinal categorical data
• you are interested in describing temporal patterns of social phenomena

Date & Time:
Monday, June 23, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and
Tuesday, June 24 2025, 12:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (s.t.)
 

Place: LIfBi, Wilhelmsplatz 3, 96047 Bamberg, Room 01.13
 

Registration:
To register, please send an email to weiterbildung(at)lifbi.de by June 09, 2025. Registration is mandatory. The number of participants is limited to 25.

About the Trainer
Dr. Marcel Raab
Marcel Raab is Senior Researcher at the State Institute for Family Research at the University of Bamberg, Editor and Deputy Managing Director of the Journal of Family Research, and Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Marriage and Family. Previously, he worked as a research assistant at the National Educational Panel Study and the Professorship of Demography at the University of Bamberg, as a research fellow at the WZB Berlin, and As-sistant Professor for Sociology at the University of Mannheim. He is a member of the Advi-sory Board of the Sequence Analysis Association, author of the QASS book “Sequence Anal-ysis” co-authored with Emanuela Struffolino, and developer of the R package “ggseqplot” for sequence data visualization.
 

Prof. Dr. Emanuela Struffolino
Emanuela Struffolino is Associate Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Mi-lan. After receiving her PhD from the University of Milano-Bicocca, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Lausanne and at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. She was then Guest Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the Humboldt-Universität zu Ber-lin. Since 2024 she is President of the SAA-Sequence Analysis Association. Her research in-terests include social inequality, life-course sociology, family demography, and methods for longitudinal data analysis. She has published in - among others - Sociological Methodology, Demography, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, and Advances in Life Course Research.

Workshop: "Wie schreibe ich ein überzeugendes Exposé?" (27.06.2025, 9:00 bis 13:30 Uhr)

Dieser Kurs wird in Zusammenarbeit mit dem LIfBi angeboten.

Inhalte:

Die Erstellung eines Exposés (z.B. für eine Stipendienbewerbung) stellt Promovierende in der Anfangsphase oft vor herausfordernde Aufgaben: Wie kann ich erklären, was ich selbst noch erforschen will? Wie kann ich überzeugend darlegen, dass ich einen Weg zum Ziel „Dissertation“ kenne, der für mich selbst oft genug noch nicht klar erscheint?

In diesem Workshop wollen wir Antworten auf diese Fragen finden, indem wir uns bewusst machen, was das Ziel eines Exposés ist und wie dieses durch einen klaren Aufbau, spezifische sprachliche Mittel und die Erstellung eines überzeugenden Zeitplans erreicht werden kann.

Ablauf:

• Eingrenzung des Themas über den Arbeitstitel
• Für wen schreibe ich das Exposé?
• Aufbau und Struktur des Exposés
• Umgang mit Unsicherheiten im Text
• Sprachliche Tipps & Tricks
• Zeitplanerstellung für das Exposé

Methode:

Die Trainerin gibt kurze Inputs über das Ziel eines Exposés und wie die Teilnehmenden dieses durch eine sinnvolle Vorstrukturierung der fachlichen Inhalte und eine geeignete sprachliche Darstellung erreichen können. Diese Inhalte üben die Teilnehmenden in kurzen Aufgabensequenzen selbstständig ein. In der Arbeit in Kleingruppen wird das Gelernte auf die Promotionsvorhaben der Teilnehmenden übertragen.

Lernziele:

• Geeigneten Arbeitstitel formulieren
• Das eigene Exposé überzeugend aufbauen und klar formulieren
• Mit Unsicherheiten im Exposé souverän umgehen
• Einen Zeitplan für das Dissertationsvorhaben erstellen

Maximale Teilnehmerzahl: 12 Personen

Zielgruppe: Promovierende und Master-Studierende mit der Absicht zu promovieren

Termin: 27.06.2025, 9:00 bis 13:30 Uhr (s.t.), inkl. 30 Minuten Pause

Arbeitseinheiten: 4

Ort: Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsverläufe (LIfBi), Wilhelmsplatz 3, Raum 02.20

Leitung: Alisa Müller, M.A.

Alisa Müller arbeitet in Nürnberg als Redaktionsleitung und seit zehn Jahren als freie Journalistin für verschiedene Printmedien. Sie hat in der slavischen Sprachwissenschaft an der Universität Bamberg promoviert.

Content:

Online publication or publisher? What do I need to consider when publishing my dissertation? And how does the publication process work?

The doctoral regulations offer several options for publishing your dissertation. We will inform you about the advantages and disadvantages of these publication models and forms of publishing as well as the publication process. 

The Research Information System (FIS), the platform for the online publication of the dissertation and the institutional repository of the University of Bamberg, will be presented. Using the University of Bamberg Press (UBP) as an example, the advantages of so-called hybrid publishing will also be discussed. 

The event will also address the special features of cumulative dissertations, as well as copyright and contract law issues. 

You are welcome to find out more in advance here.

Planned procedure:

• Thematic introduction by means of surveys
• Presentation on the publication of the dissertation with interactive impulses
• Space for individual questions

Participants learn about the various options for publishing their dissertation and the publication process by way of example.

Target group:doctoral students

Place and time: online; 08.07.2025, 13:00-14:00h

Working units:1 AE

Instructor:

Tessa Sauerwein / Bamberg University Library/ Universitätsbibliothek Bamberg

Tessa Sauerwein, M.A., advises doctoral candidates on the publication of their dissertations and processes dissertations within the Research and Publication Services department of Bamberg University Library.

Registation: No registration required.

Zoom-Link:

https://uni-bamberg.zoom-x.de/j/64519539984

Meeting-ID: 645 1953 9984

Kenncode: fpsub2025!