Methods in Social Change Workshops

This is a methods series that Dr. Fouad Bou Zeineddine (University of Greenwich) is organizing in parallel with the Psychology of Resistance Meetings Series. We are planning a variety of workshops, webinars, and roundtables to explore original, cutting edge, or underutilized research methods and designs for studying societal change/inertia, which is central to understanding resistance. 

The series begins on April 17th, 2025 with Kevin Durrheim and Nnaemeka Ohamadike (University of Johannesburg), who will show us how to use LLMs and word embeddings to understand phenomena relevant to social change and inertia, including polarization and ideological networks. 

The programme is still in development, but planned sessions include (tentative titles):

Emma Thomas (Flinders University) - Integrating Person-Centred Approaches in Survey and Natural Language Data

Ammar Shamaileh (Doha Institute for Graduate Studies) - Elite Networks in Social Change and Inertia

Simon Angus (Monash University) - Computational Narrative Extraction and Visualisation 

Agnieszka Rychwalska (University of Warsaw) - Functional Connectivity Analysis and Synchrony 

Joshua Uyheng (Ateneo de Manila University) - Decolonial Approaches to Big Data Analysis 

Diala Hawi (Doha Institute for Graduate Studies) - Structural Balance in Domestic and International Relations

Fouad Bou Zeineddine (University of Greenwich) - Synthesizing Methods for Consilient Social Systems Research

More details and the registration link for the April 17 session will be posted here soon, so keep an eye on this space! Or, complete this form to receive information about every session throughout the year and a newsletter summarising our events every two months. If you are unable to register or attend for any reason, you can find recordings of sessions on YouTube and in the Resistance Psychology Network archive 

Thanks go to the Institute for Lifecourse Development - Centre for Inequalities for sponsoring this project. Thanks also to the University of Johannesburg Methods Hub and the Resistance Psychology Network for their support. We acknowledge funding by the British Academy Talent Development Award.