Applications open for the CAGE Summer School 2024: Pre-doctoral Research Training

Are you an undergrad or masters-level student who is interested in a career in academic or policy research? Have you got an interest in complementing your economics training with practical training in coding, data management and research design? Do you want to know how to get started as a researcher FAST?

Warwick University’s CAGE Research Centre is running a three-day Summer School from (guests arrive Sunday, 30th June) Monday July 1st - Wednesday July 3rd 2024 (guests depart Thursday, 4th July) which will provide a comprehensive introduction to the tools and systems needed for applied social science research.

CAGE will fund accommodation, meals and travel for attendees.

The summer school will cover the following topics: -

• Coding for Economists: Organising a professional coding workflow using Github and Python.
• Data Management and Analysis: Case studies on how to put together complex repeated cross-section and panel datasets, along with how to present and analyse them.
• Digitisation of Historical Data: Converting hard copy tabular and text data into electronic form. How to employ OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tools and what you can do when those methods won’t work. How to use GIS (Geographic Information System) techniques to extract spatial data from maps. Using non-standard approaches to measure historical phenomena.
• Working on the Cloud: Your desktop machine is too slow so you have to move to cloud computing. We’ll provide a guide to setting up and running big data analysis on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Using LLMs in Economics Research: Large-language Models are all the rage. We’ll show how they can be used to build new types of data, for example, the codification of large text databases into a structured form.
• Research Design: Faculty will present examples of their research and go under the surface to show the data construction, analysis and workflows that were involved in putting together a paper.
• Data Visualisation: How to build creative and well-designed data visualisations.

The timetable of the summer school will be organised around lectures in the first half of the day with research presentations / case studies in the second half. There’ll also be chances for hands-on and participatory work by students in the afternoon sessions.

Organiser: Professor Mirko Draca, University of Warwick (CAGE Director)

Lecturers/Presenters: Arthur Turrell (Bank of England), Eric Melander (Birmingham), Peter John Lambert (LSE), Marie Segger (The Economist magazine).

Eligibility

The summer school is open to UK and EU undergraduates (including first years) and people who are finishing or have finished a Masters level degree in economics or quantitative social science. We also have places for recent recruits to the UK government’s Government Economic Services (GES). Note that funding constraints prevent us from opening the school up to those outside the UK or the EU.

Location and timing

Scarman Conference Centre,
Warwick University,
Coventry CV4 7AL,
United Kingdom

We will start with a welcome barbecue on the evening of Sunday June 30th and finish all activities by 4pm on Wednesday July 3rd.

Practicalities

• Accommodation and meals will be provided free of charge to students. Economy only travel expenses up to £500 Europe, and £150 UK will also be covered.
• Travel expenses will be reimbursed post event. Facilities are fully accessible.
• Applicants must be available and attend for the full duration of the summer school.
• There will be dinners and social events as part of the Summer School.

How to Apply

Please fill out the online form by Friday 22nd March 2024:-

Please note: the submission period has now closed

Notification of acceptance will be sent out by Friday 19th April 2024.

Any questions about the Summer School, please direct your enquiry to cage.centre@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window