Big data refers to data that is large in scale, primarily data that has been collected through, or made available by digital technologies; e.g., Twitter Posts, Facebook posts, mobile phone records, comments on newspaper articles, tax filings, voter registration, restaurant reviews, scanning of archival documents, etc. There are societal and scholarly demands to develop high quality personnel who have the skills to analyze these data. The purpose of the Big Data and Computational Social Science Research Cluster is to strengthen the research community working in this area by attracting attention to work currently being done by scholars at UBC, facilitating networking amongst those conducting research in this area, developing synergies amongst those currently working in this area at UBC, and developing infrastructure and pursuing funding opportunities to enable UBC to develop further in this scholarly field. 

Campus
Vancouver

Affiliated UBC Faculty & Postdocs

Name Role Research Interests
Jing, Zhichun Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) Prehistoric archaeology; Archaeometry; Archaeological theory; Archaeology; Anthropology; Early China; Shang Civilization; Archaeological Science; Early Urbanism; Geoarchaeology
Stecklov, Guy Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) Family and household demographic studies; Fertility; Migration; Mortality; Demography; Studies of Canadian society; Demographic behavior; Historical social change; Demographic Change in Sub-Saharan Africa; Migration and assimilation; Population and Development; Research and survey methodology
Tindall, David Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) environmental movement, social movements, environmental protest, social protest, social networks, social aspects of climate change, Aboriginal protest about natural resources and environmental issues, social surveys, polling, environmental politics, environmental attitudes, environmental values, opinion about the environment, protest about pipelines, protest about oil sands, protest about tar sands, wilderness, wilderness preservation, use of social media in social protest, use of social media in social movements, social media and social networks, social aspects of forestry, climate change policy, news media, social psychology of environmental issues, Envionmental sociology, social research methods, aboriginal forestry, social science