Synthetic Social Science Workshop

The Synthetic Social Science Workshop is a new interdisciplinary workshop at Oxford that explores the frontiers of computational modeling and generative AI for the social sciences. We meet weekly during term-time and welcome researchers from across the university who are interested in large language models (LLMs) for social science, agent-based models (ABMs), generative social science, human-computer interaction, and the construction of artificial societies. Each session will feature a mix of invited speakers, work-in-progress presentations from group members, and discussions of key texts and methods in this emerging field. The group brings together perspectives from political science, sociology, computer science, philosophy, and beyond, with the goal of building a space for exploring the theoretical and empirical challenges posed by synthetic agents and computational simulations of society.
Attendance is open to graduate students, researchers, and academic staff. If you are interested in joining, please contact Emma Madden (emma.madden@politics.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list and receive the term card.
Type: Seminar Series
Series organiser: Emma Madden (University of Oxford)
Timing: Tuesdays at 2pm

Talks:

Tuesday 21 October 2025

The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention
Date: 21 October 2025, 14:00 - 15:30
Speaker : Jamie Cummins (University of Bern)
Venue: Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details: Skills Lab
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Editor: Emma Madden