// courses

Teaching

I teach methods for the social sciences at the University of Trento, from foundational research design to computational and causal methods.

University of Trento

Computational Social Science

M.Sc. in Data Science · taught in English

An introduction to the diverse and rapidly expanding set of methods used in computational social science. Rather than treating one or two techniques in depth, the course exposes students to a broad methodological toolkit, so they can make informed choices about which approaches best fit a given research question. It places equal emphasis on prediction — the central goal of computational modeling — and on causality, an aspect too often underemphasized in the field, with hands-on exercises in Python and R.

topics

  • Principles of social methodology
  • Quantitative measurement
  • Experimental methods
  • Observational & quasi-experimental approaches (matching, DiD, IV, RDD)
  • Social network analysis and inference
  • Introduction to interpretable AI

University of Trento

Applied Social Research

B.A. in Sociology · taught in Italian

An introduction to designing and carrying out an applied social-research project from start to finish — from framing research questions to choosing appropriate methods and data. It is meant both for students drawn to scientific research and for those who simply want to understand how sociology can engage, in practical terms, with the world around us. The focus is primarily quantitative, with an emphasis on statistical and computational methods.

topics

  • Introduction to applied social research
  • Data structures and variables
  • Data collection
  • Data exploration
  • Hypothesis testing
  • Elements of statistical inference
  • Introduction to causal inference
  • Introduction to computational methods (machine learning)