Social Data Science DPhil

University of Oxford

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (October/November 2021).<MS&&> For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via <MW&&>www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas.</MW&&>

The multidisciplinary DPhil in Social Data Science provides opportunity for highly qualified students to undertake cutting- edge research focused on using unstructured heterogeneous data about human behaviour in a theoretically informed manner, thereby advancing our understanding of social processes</MS&&>.

Social traces - often generated digitally from, for example, social media, communications platforms, devices, sensors/wearables, and mobile phones - offer a way to accumulate new large-scale data, in addition to existing archives and repositories that have been converted to digital formats. Such data can be put to work helping us understand old and new foundational problems of crucial interest to the social sciences, industry, and policy-makers including social, economic and political behaviour, interpersonal relationships, market design, group formation, identity, international movement, ethics and responsible ways to enhance the social value of data, and many other topics.

The growing field of social data science involves developing the science of these social data: creating viable datasets out of messy, real world data; and developing the tools and techniques to analyse them to tell us something about the world, through explanation, prediction and the testing of interventions. In this way, social data science offers a data science where the data relates to individual and social behaviour and a theoretically informed social science with generation and analysis of real-time transactional data at its centre.

Over the course of the three to four years, you are expected to produce an important and original piece of scholarship that will make a significant contribution to the dynamic area of Social Data Science. On completion, you will have the qualities and transferable skills necessary to excel in teaching, research, policymaking or business.

The DPhil programme at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) is also available on a part-time basis. The part-time programme is spread over six to eight years of study and research. The part-time degree offers the flexibility of part-time study with the same high standards and requirements as the full-time DPhil programme. The part-time DPhil also provides an excellent opportunity for professionals in high tech industries to undertake rigorous long-term research that may be relevant to their working life.<MS&&> Please visit the department website for further details on part-time doctoral study or contact MW&&>[email protected]</MW&&</MS&&>.