Social Simulation for a Digital Society

Johan A. Elkink is Associate Professor in Social Science Research Methods at University College Dublin. He specialises in quantitative methods in political science, in particular simulation-based research and spatial econometrics. Besides applications in voting behaviour in referendums and national elections, he wrote on the international diffusion of democracy and the evolution of personalist regimes. His work appeared, among other outlets, in the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research and Electoral Studies.

Nial Friel is Professor of Statistics at University College Dublin. His research is broadly focused on statistical network analysis, Bayesian statistics and Monte Carlo methods. He is especially interested in applications at the interface of these areas. He is currently the joint editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C.

Thomas U. Grund is Associate Professor in Sociology at University College Dublin and was Visiting Professor at the Institute of Sociology at University of Zurich and Simon Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester. He studied computer science and sociology at the University of Trier (Diplom), University of Cambridge (MPhil) and the University of Oxford (DPhil) and held postdoctoral positions at ETH Zurich, Universite de Montreal and Linkoping University. His main research interests include social network analysis and analytical sociology.

Tamara Hochstrasser is an ecologist. For her doctoral research she has developed an individual-based vegetation model. Since joining University College Dublin in 2003, she has contributed to research on modelling of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural land, ecosystem services and biodiversity management in urban areas. Tamara is convinced that a transdisciplinary approach is needed for creating an effective evidence-base for decisions making. Some of her theoretical considerations about transdisciplinary research are captured in an agent-based model and in a course manual on knowledge creation at the science-practice interface that she uses for teaching and intends to publish.

Pablo Lucas is a Lecturer at the University College Dublin, Ireland, with research focused on computational social science, particularly experimental designs using agent-based models and data analysis. His education include reading for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (BSc) focused on evolutionary networks, a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) and a Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) focused on agent-based (social) simulations using models of social behaviour.