Social Science Space

During the recording of every Social Science Bites podcast, the guest has been asked the following: Which piece of social science research has most inspired or most influenced you? And now, in honor of the 50th Bites podcast to air, journalist and interviewer David Edmonds has compiled those responses into three separate montages. The second appears here, with answers – presented alphabetically – from Bites’ guests ranging from Sarah Franklin to Angela MacRobbie.

When looking at big data, says computational social scientist Gary King, “The data itself isn’t likely to be particularly useful; the question is whether you can make it useful.” In this Social Science Bites podcast, he explains more about the importance of data analysis.

In this first of three of montages from past Social Science Bites podcasts, 15 renowned social scientists reveal their pick for “Which piece of social science research has most inspired or most influenced you?”

People tend to herd together, whether it’s following the crowd or determining what news to accept. UCL economist Michelle Baddeley has studied this behavior and discusses what she’s learned in this latest Social Science Bites podcast.

In this Social Science Bites podcast, MIT’s Sandy Pentland tells interviewer Dave Edmonds about the origins of social physics in the barren days before the advent of widespread good data and solid statistical methods and how it blossomed as both a field and for Pentland’s own research.

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Harvard’s Jennifer Hochschild explains to interviewer David Edmonds some of the pertinent data points from her years of using quantitative and qualitative analysis to map the racial, ethnic and class cleavages in America’s demography.

Anna Machin’s research combine the study of neurochemistry, dating sites and waist-to-hip ratios to gives us the best understanding of the evolution of love and romance. In this Social science Bites podcast she details her research interests and findings.

Sociologist has studied the dance club scene — think of the lamented Fabric nightclub as a cultural touchstone — for years as a ‘participant observer.’ In this Social Science Bites podcast she talks about the scene’s obvious drug use and the mechanics of doing ethnography at a rave.

In his conversation with interviewer David Edmonds, Michael Billig — the author of landmark book ‘Banal Nationalism,’ dives deeply into one particular example of nationalism, the British royal family, and what the British themselves think about the royal family and the place of the royals in British ideology

It’s often remarked that technology has made the world a smaller place. While this has been especially true for those with the wherewithal to buy the latest gadget and to travel at will, but it’s also true for economic migrants. Those technological ties are one of the key research interests of Mirca Madianou who discusses her work on transnational families and social media in the latest Social Science Bites podcast.

“As a behavioral scientist,” Iris Bohnet tells David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast looking at implicit bias, “I strongly believe that we now do have the insights and the tools to help us promote behavior change, not by changing mindsets but changing organizations.”

Michael Burawoy is a practitioner of what we might call ‘extreme ethnography.’ In this Social Science Bites podcast, Burawoy tells interviewer Dave Edmonds about his various experiences on factory floors, and some of the specific lessons he learned and the broader points — often unexpected — that emerged from the synthesis of his experiences.