In this episode, Tom Emery sits down with Lana Fani, Managing Director of the Netherlands Cohorts Consortium (NCC), to talk about her path into cohort research and what drew her to the NCC. Lana explains why cohort studies are such a powerful tool for health research as well as other fields, and how linking data across cohorts - the NCC's core ambition - could unlock findings a single study could seldom reach on its own. Tom and Lana also dig into an unexpected overlap: how health and social science data are connected, even when the two fields rarely talk to each other.

Affiliations:

• Dr. Lana Fani, MD, Managing Director of the Netherlands Cohorts Consortium
• Dr. Tom Emery - Executive Director of ODISSEI, the Dutch National Infrastructure for Social Science; Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Sociology of Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Useful links:
https://www.nwo.nl/projecten/fovyr99232
https://amazingerasmusmc.nl/epidemiologie/miljoenen-voor-landelijk-cohortonderzoek-naar-gezond-ouder-worden/

In this episode, Tom Emery talks with Jack Fitzgerald, a PhD candidate in economics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Tinbergen Institute. Jack tells us all about replication, and how he developed his passion for it. He points out that replication can be a very useful tool for early career researchers to understand how experts in the field think about and conduct research, down to their code. He and Tom dig into how the Replication Games could change the research culture and how they came to be. Jack also discusses the challenges and opportunities inherent to administrative data, and suggests how those data could be made more accessible for replication.

Affiliations:

• Jack Fitzgerald, PhD Candidate, School of Business and Economics, Ethics, Governance and Society; Tinbergen Institute
• Dr. Tom Emery - Executive Director of ODISSEI, the Dutch National Infrastructure for Social Science; Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Sociology of Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Useful links:
https://www.i4replication.org/
https://www.i4replication.org/blog/replication-games-in-secure-environments-replicating-research-with-dutch-administrative-data

Tom Emery speaks with Chris Bail, Professor of Sociology, Computer Science, Political Science, and Public Policy at Duke University and co-founder of SICSS (the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science). Nearly ten years on, Chris reflects on how SICSS grew from a single location to more than 50 worldwide, and the community that made it possible. He also explains why the part of the courses in which participants develop their own projects is the heart of the programme: a space where experimentation, and even failure, is part of learning. And with AI reshaping both education and the social sciences, Chris draws on the lessons of COVID-era adaptation to ask what it means to teach in the age of LLMs.

Affiliations:

• Dr. Chris Bail, Professor of Sociology, Computer Science, Political Science, and Public Policy at Duke University; Co-founder of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Sciences
• Dr. Tom Emery - Executive Director of ODISSEI, the Dutch National Infrastructure for Social Science; Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Sociology of Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Useful links:
https://sicss.io/apply#faq
https://sicss.io/overview
https://github.com/compsocialscience/summer-institute
https://sicss.io/tom