The ERC Bayesian Agent-based Population Studies project team, based at the University of Southampton and the University of Rostock, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, the ESRC Centre for Population Change and the National Centre for Research Methods, are delighted to announce updated arrangements for the short training course "Agent-based modelling for social research", to be held in November 2020. In the light of the travel and epidemiological situation, the course will be held entirely online, and will be coordinated by the team at the University of Southampton.

The main aims of this short course are to familiarise the participants with the most recent advances in building, analysing and documenting agent-based models of social processes. During the course, we will cover aspects related to the choice of modelling language and environment, tailoring models for specific research purposes, statistical analysis of model results and key principles of experimental design, inclusion of realistic cognitive assumptions in models, and documenting the modelling endeavours by using a variety of approaches. The course is aimed particularly at PhD level students and early career researchers, with some prior experience with coding and interest in computational modelling in social science.

The course will involve programming in a general-purpose language Julia, as well as in a domain-specific language ML3, designed for demographic agent-based modelling, both of which will be introduced to the participants during the week.

Further details and the application requirements are included in the call below. The deadline for applications passed on midnight on 29 February 2020, and successful applicants were notified about acceptance by 15 March. We regret that due to high demand we are unable to offer additional places on this course.

Please note: the course was originally planned for July 2020, but in the light of the COVID-19 situation, it needed to be rescheduled, and is currently envisaged to take place online in November 2020. The successful applicants will be notified about the details in July 2020.

For specific queries, please email abm2020@soton.ac.uk.