Synthetic Agents for Social Science Workshop
OCPSG is organizing a workshop ‘Synthetic Agents for Social Science’ with Emma Madden from the Department of Politics and International Relations. This two-hour workshop will examine the role of the social science research applications of AI‑driven generative agents: virtual “participants” that can mimic survey respondents, simulate how opinions spread, and preview policy messages. The workshop will surface the core assumptions behind these tools and explore methods for checking their outputs against real data. It will also address common challenges and confront ethical questions around bias and privacy. By the end of the session, participants will have co‑created a set of practical guidelines for responsible use and will leave with a bibliography and toolkit to support the use of synthetic agents in future research projects. The workshop will not cover any coding tasks (to hopefully be covered in a follow-up session), but will serve as an overview of the viability and use cases of generative agents.
Emma is DPhil researcher at the University of Oxford specializing in computational methods in social science with a particular interest in modelling complex social systems through the lens of political opinion. Some of her research topics include: Replication of social science experiments with LLM-backed synthetic agents; Network theory and complexes systems applications in modelling collective behavior and opinion change dynamics; Experimental validation of synthetic social agents; Evaluating LLM bias reduction methods. She also works as a data scientist and methodologist on social surveys for London-based firm Complexas. Her fieldwork is concentrated in the developing world, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The workshop takes place in person in the Seminar Room A at the Manor Road Building on Wednesday, 28 May, at 15:30. It is open to both Oxford and non-Oxford students and researchers, who also have the option to join the workshop online.
The Oxford Computational Political Science Group (OCPSG) is a non-partisan research initiative based at the University of Oxford and supported by the Department of Politics and International Relations. We are dedicated to advancing the study and application of computational methods in political science. By offering a collaborative environment that blends political science with computational techniques, OCPSG empowers students and researchers to explore innovative solutions to complex political questions.
Should you have any questions, please contact emma.madden@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk for more information.
Date:
28 May 2025, 15:30
Venue:
Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details:
Seminar Room A
Speaker:
Emma Madden (University of Oxford)
Organising department:
Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR)
Organiser:
Oxford Computational Political Science Group (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
ocpsg@politics.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Oxford Computational Political Science Group (University of Oxford)
Part of:
Oxford Computational Political Science Group Event Series
Booking required?:
Not required
Booking url:
https://forms.gle/tQzF1HTjakW1wZuZ6
Cost:
Free
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Bosco Hung
