| Social Data Science Portfolio | ASA 2025 |
Reimagining the Future of Work: A Social Data Science Portfolio
Welcome to a curated portfolio of applied research projects developed in conjunction with the American Sociological Association’s 2025 Annual Meeting, themed Reimagining the Future of Work. This site showcases how social data science (SDS) can enhance, challenge, and extend the insights of traditional sociological research.
Each project corresponds to a session category from the ASA 2025 program — Book Forums, Plenary Sessions, Thematic Tracks, Special Panels, and Regional Spotlights — and uses data science to investigate the same sociological questions raised in those sessions.
Why This Portfolio?
Sociology is evolving. The questions we ask about inequality, labor, technology, and identity are increasingly entangled with computational infrastructures, platform logics, and data-mediated social life.
As a social data science graduate student and former public sector research officer, I designed this portfolio to:
- Bridge sociological theory and data science practice
- Demonstrate the unique value of SDS in illuminating labor, inequality, and institutional structure
- Contribute new tools, typologies, and visualizations that extend existing debates
- Offer actionable insight to academics, nonprofits, policy makers, and applied research teams
This work is built with a commitment to clarity, equity, and methodological transparency.
What is Social Data Science?
Social Data Science is not simply sociology with Python. It is an epistemic expansion — one that integrates:
- Social theory: for interpreting meaning, power, and structure
- Computational methods: for analyzing scale, pattern, and system dynamics
- Ethical commitments: to fairness, interpretability, and responsible modeling
Each project in this portfolio explicitly identifies:
- The sociological problem at stake
- The traditional methods commonly used
- The SDS methods applied here
- The insight gained only through social data science
Site Organization
The portfolio is organized by ASA 2025 session types:
| Section | Description |
|---|---|
| Book Forum | Empirically grounded critiques or extensions of recent monographs using computational methods |
| Plenary Sessions | Reflexive studies on the state of the discipline and the structure of academic labor |
| Thematic Sessions | Core labor-related questions: platform capitalism, burnout, AI and inequality |
| Special Sessions | Critical interventions: feminist thought, queer labor, racialized work experiences |
| Regional Spotlights | Urban, immigrant, and environmental labor issues using localized or civic open data |
Each project is presented in a structured format:
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Research Question
- Literature Review
- Methods
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- Reproducibility (code + data links)
Tools and Methods Used
This portfolio draws on a range of tools and frameworks:
- Python:
pandas,scikit-learn,nltk,BERTopic,spaCy,matplotlib,plotly - Text Analysis: Topic modeling, sentiment scoring, legal document mining
- Network Analysis: Institutional clustering, citation maps, collaboration networks
- Geospatial Analysis: Census + platform data overlays for labor equity
- Dashboards & Visuals: Streamlit, Jupyter, Plotly, and static site visual storytelling
All work is reproducible, version-controlled, and grounded in ethical standards for data use and representation.
Who Should Explore This Work?
This portfolio is designed for multiple audiences at ASA 2025:
- Academic sociologists interested in methodological expansion
- Applied researchers & NGOs seeking actionable data tools
- Editors and publishers looking for new digital formats for theory and data
- Students and peers exploring hybrid approaches to labor and inequality
- Organizations and employers considering SDS contract or consulting work
Let’s Collaborate
If you’re interested in collaborative work — building data tools for public sociology, conducting organizational analysis, or developing workshops on responsible data practices — feel free to connect with me at ASA or via [contact info].