Gaining an Edge: Innovations in market and applied research

The course focuses on the emergence of novel types of research and data, in a technologically mediated world. Some topics that we will discuss include:

  1. Introduction in scientific authorship. Academic ethics in social sciences.
  2. Social transformations in Europe and across the globe [3]; Harari on Homo Deus [1] [2]; research in life sciences and its relevance for social science research;
  3. What is the role of information technology for present-day academic writers? Technologies of academic authorship – from Google Scholar to referencing software and academic social networks
  4. Big Data and social research. Invited speakers: Corina Bragaru, Gabriel Hâncean
  5. Local and global inequalities [3];
  6. Collaborative authorship and knowledge-making: from Wikipedia to crowd science movements [4] [5]
  7. Market research in the age of Big Data. Invited speaker: Alin Teodorescu, IMAS
  8. Information technology and the science of innovation. Invited speaker: Adrian Curaj, UEFISCDI
  9. Scientific misconduct and scientific expertise. Invited speaker: Emilian Socaciu, Research Center in Applied Ethics, University of Bucharest

References

[1]         Y. N. Harari, Homo Deus. A Brief History of Tomorrow. Harper, 2014.

[2]         Y. N. Harari, “‘Homo sapiens is an obsolete algorithm’: Yuval Noah Harari on how data could eat the world,” Wired, 2016.

[3]         L. Vlăsceanu and M.-G. Hâncean, Modernitatea românească. Bucharest: Paralela 45, 2014.

[4]         C. Rughiniș, R. Rughiniș, and B. Humă, “Impromptu Crowd Science and the Mystery of the Bechdel-Wallace Test Movement,” in Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI EA ’16, 2016, pp. 487–500.

[5]         C. Rughiniș, “Citizen Science, Gallaxies and Tropes. Knowledge Creation in Impromptu Crowd Science Movements,” in The 15th RoEduNet Conference, 2016.