5th June, Leeds, meeting on "Complexity Systems Dynamics"

This is a gentle reminder concerning the half-day LMS-funded "Complexity Systems Dynamics" (CoSyDy) Meeting on "Complexity in economics and social dynamics"  that will be held in the School of Mathematics of the University of Leeds on Wednesday 5th June 2013.

The speakers for the June CoSyDy meeting are Peter Grindrod (Reading), Hannah Fry (UCL), Sergio Morales (Warwick), Bruce Edmonds (Manchester Met.), and Jonathan Ward (Leeds).  I am here attaching a poster of the meeting on which you will find a tentative timetable (http://www1.maths.leeds.ac.uk/~amtmmo/CoSyDy_June2013_poster.pdf). The meeting's detailed programme (including the titles and abstracts of the talks) can also be found at http://www1.maths.leeds.ac.uk/~amtmmo/CoSyDy_June2013_programme.pdf

The meeting shall start at 12:45 (first talk at 13:30) and the last talk will end at 17:00. There is no registration fee and everyone is welcome to attend the meeting (within space limits). I would be most grateful if you could bring this event to interested colleagues (including postdocs and PhD students).

Directions to the Leeds School of Mathematics can be found here:
http://www.maths.leeds.ac.uk/home/visit-us.html
http://www.maths.leeds.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/directions_2011-12.pdf

For catering purposes and due to space limitation, I would greatly appreciate if those who are planning to attend the meeting could register by emailing me (M.Mobilia@leeds.ac.uk) by Friday 24th May.

Workshop 30th May london: Agentcy in Complex Information Systems

PhD studentship: Agent-Based Model approach to understanding changes in ethnic relations

An Agent-Based Model approach to understanding changes in ethnic relations: applications to neighbourhood ethnic composition and health.

Applications are invited for a 3-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) PhD Studentship based at CoDE under the supervision of Professor James Nazroo, Dr Laia Bécares, and Dr Nick Shryane. The project provides a studentship covering UK/EU tuition fees, an annual tax-free stipend at Research Council rates (£13,590 in 2012/13), plus the Advanced Quantitative Methods supplement (£3,000 per year) for a total of £16,590. Funding will be for three years of full-time study (+3 Scheme), starting in October 2013 with an expected submission date of September 2016.  

Background

Ethnic minority people living in areas with higher concentrations of other ethnic minority residents tend to be healthier, to report higher social cohesion and decreased experiences of racism. Neighbourhood effects on health consist of complex mutually dependent processes in which individuals interact with each other and with their neighbourhoods, and where both individuals and areas adapt and change over time. Incorporating the exploration of the role of ethnicity in the association between place and health adds an extra layer of complexity, involving the interaction between place and ethnicity in the racialisation of both areas and individuals. Recent years have seen a surge of national and international studies examining the association between neighbourhood ethnic composition and health, with a view of understanding the mechanisms by which residential composition impacts on health; however, work to date has been limited to statistical analyses of cross-sectional datasets which aim to isolate area-level from individual-level effects on health, failing to model the dynamic mechanisms by which individuals and areas interact with each other and change over time. Agent-based models provide an innovative way of understanding neighbourhood effects, as they can be used to model the dynamic process related to place and health by examining mechanisms that involve interactions between diverse individuals, and interactions between individuals and environments. Agent-based models also allow for the specification of agents at several levels (individuals, neighbourhoods, and higher-level organisms), providing additional information on how macro-level characteristics influence interactions occurring at the micro-level, and vice versa.

Research Objectives

This PhD project aims to model the dynamic processes related to changes in ethnic relations, and how these play out in terms of area effects on health.

The work is an independent course of enquiry that will add great value to the main aim of the project of understanding of the contemporary patterning of ethnic inequalities and how this relates to the ways in which ethnic identities are perceived, acted upon and experienced. 

Location and Supervision

The PhD will be hosted at the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research (CCSR), University of Manchester. The University of Manchester is part of the ESRC North West Doctoral Training Centre (NWDTC), and the student will be based in the Social Statistics accredited pathway. The student will be embedded within the research team at the University of Manchester, and will be supervised by Professor James Nazroo, Dr Laia Bécares and Dr Nick Shryane.

Admissions Criteria

Applicants should hold a minimum upper-second honours degree (or equivalent) in sociology, geography, epidemiology, computational social science, or related area and a Masters-level degree in a relevant discipline. Experience of programming and/or simulation is a plus.

How to apply

Applicants are required to provide: (i) an academic CV; (ii) official academic transcripts; (iii) contact details of two suitable referees; and (iv) a cover letteroutlining your suitability for the study and your research experience to date.

Applications should be emailed to: laia.becares@manchester.ac.uk. The successful candidate will be required to submit a full University of Manchester on-line application, plus supporting documents (two academic references and degree transcripts) to fulfil the normal admissions process.

Any enquiries relating to the project and/or suitability should be directed to Dr Bécares at the address above.

Deadline

The deadline for applications is April 30^th 2013. Candidates may be called for interview in early May 2013.

CfP: Eighth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context

Eighth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context:

                      Context modeling and Management in Real-World Applications

                      Annecy, Haute Savoie, France, October 28 – November 1^st 2013

             http://www.polytech.univ-savoie.fr/index.php?id=context-13-home

Deadlines for submissions: 
          June 1^st, 2013                Full papers, posters, videos, and demonstration abstracts
          March 30, 2013             Workshop proposals

As with previous conferences of the CONTEXT series, CONTEXT’13 will provide a forum for presenting and discussing high-quality research and applications on context in an interdisciplinary way. Researchers and practitioners are invited to share insights and cutting-edge results from the wide range of disciplines concerned with context, including: Cognitive Sciences, Computer Science, Social Sciences and Organizational Sciences, and all application areas, like:  Business, Education, Ecology and Environment, Economics and finance, Engineering, Image management, Interactive Installation, Games, Geographical Information Systems, Law, Linguistics, Management, Medicine and Health care, Transportation, Robotics, etc.

Papers will be published in the Springer LNAI format. See the conference Web Site for details:  http://www.polytech.univ-savoie.fr/index.php?id=context-13-home

Network Summer School 2013, Sweden

René Pfitzner (ETH Zurich) together with Petter Holme and his PhD student Fariba Karimi are organizing a network science summer school 

"Network Factory 2013 - Networks, Information Science and Social Media" 

to take place from 10th to 15th June 2013 (right after NetSci 2013 in Copenhagen) in the very south of Sweden. 

The Summer School is targeted to MSc and PhD students interested in the broad connections between Network Science and the Information Sciences, with a focus on issues concerning social media. This one week summer school is sponsored by NNNS (Nordic Network of Network Scientists), allowing us to a) cover *all* expenses for students from the nordic countries and b) a reduced participation fee (covering accommodation and catering) of 500 EUR for non-nordic participants. The total number of participants is limited and there are still a few places left. Deadline for registration is April 20th 2013.

Speakers at our summer school include: Ciro Cattuto, Sune Lehmann, Alan Mislove, Juyong Park, Martin Rosvall and Katharina Zweig, (more to be confirmed).

Please find more details & program at: http://networkfactory2013.wordpress.com/