ACSPRI Social Science Methodology Conference

Four plenary speakers have now been confirmed for the conference.

Rob Ackland, Australian National University
Title: The Social Scientist's Role in the Era of Big Data

Robert Ackland is an Associate Professor in the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute at the Australian National University and leads the Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks (http://voson.anu.edu.au). His PhD was in economics, focusing on index number theory in the context of cross-country comparisons of income and inequality. Robert has been studying online social and organisational networks since 2002 and his research has been funded by five Australian Research Council grants. His research has appeared in journals such as the Review of Economics and   Statistics, Social Networks, Computational Economics, Social Science Computer Review, and the Journal of Social Structure. VOSON was established in 2005, and aims to advance the social science of the Internet by conducting research, developing research tools, and providing research training. The VOSON software for hyperlink network construction and analysis has been publicly available since 2006 and has been used by over 1500 researchers worldwide. Robert established the Social Science of the Internet specialisation in the ANU's Master of Social Research in 2008, and his book Web Social Science: Concepts, Data and Tools for Social Scientists in the Digital Age (SAGE) was published in July 2013.

Alex Broom, The University of Queensland
Title: Using solicited diaries in social research: Documenting the lived experience over time

Alex Broom is Associate Professor of Sociology, Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Head of Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, University of Queensland, The University of Queensland. He specialises in the sociology of health, illness and well being. Alex works regularly with a wide range of industry partners (e.g. hospitals, community organisations, professional organisations related to health and medicine) with a focus on improving people's experience of illness and the delivery of healthcare. His program of research melds the conceptual richness of sociology with the value of applied, translational health research.

Charlotte Greenhalgh, Monash University
Title: The Social Survey in Historical Perspective

Charlotte Greenhalgh is a Discovery Early Career Researcher at Monash University (2014-2017). She was previously the holder of a Commonwealth Scholarship at Oxford University (2009-2012) and a Kate Edgar postdoctoral award at the University of Auckland (2013). Charlotte's doctoral research (Oxford, 2012) explored the emotional experience of ageing in mid-twentieth-century Britain. She has also published on young people, romance, and courtship in interwar New Zealand. Her current project examines the experience of participating in mid-twentieth-century social scientific research and its influence on modes of selfhood and social control in Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Simon Jackman, Stanford University
Title: Survey Research in the 21st century: challenges, opportunities and open questions

Simon Jackman is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and is one of the principal investigators of the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2010-2017. Professor Jackman's research centers on American electoral politics, public opinion, democratic representation and survey research.