Training Modules

Brown has a long tradition of research in the area of development and inequality. In the social sciences, over 35 faculty have research interests in this area. GPD is committed to supporting and promoting a wide range of research initiatives by faculty, students, and our partner institutions in development and inequality.

As part of our focus on research, we offer training modules to interested graduate students in the social sciences each semester. This spring we will be offering:

May 2024 Graduate Program in Development Modules

Research Development Module
May 13-17 - Danny Choi, 9am-1:30pm

This GPD module is designed to unpack and demystify the process of research development. Drawing on the experiences of authors of awarding-winning papers and books that vary significantly in their substantive focus and methodological orientation, we will seek to gain a holistic understanding of how authors came to generate their research questions, develop theoretical frameworks, navigate the data collection process, conduct analyses, and write. Particular attention will be paid to the nonlinearity of the research process as well as aspects of research development that are not easily observable while reading published research, including discussions of substantive and logistical challenges as well as critical decisions that lead to success or failure. The course will involve a combination of lectures, conversations with external speakers, and workshopping of your own research.

Graduate students can sign up for modules here. The deadline to sign up for Research Development is May 5th.

Advanced Text Analysis - Text Analysis with Python and the ChatGPT API
May 20-24 - Andras Zsom, 10:00am-12 noon, 1:00pm-3:00pm

Text analysis has become an increasingly popular and powerful tool in social scientific research. Conversational AI, especially ChatGPT, has become extremely popular over the past year. While many are familiar with and frequently use its web interface, we will explore its API (Application Programming Interface). The API access allows you to interact with ChatGPT using the Python programing language in a google colab notebook or any other coding environment. It radically speeds up the development and deployment of many natural language processing tasks such as text summarization, sentiment analysis, topic modeling, text transformations (such as translation, grammar correction, and style adjustments), and chatbot development.

Graduate students can sign up for modules here. The deadline to sign up for Advanced Text Analysis is May 5th.

S4 Summer 2024 GIS Institute