SICSS Comes to Pakistan: Reflections on Co-Organizing SICSS-Habib 2026
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From June 8th to June 19th, I had the privilege of co-organizing the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS) at Habib University, alongside Dr. Qasim Pasta. It was, to my genuine excitement, the first time SICSS has ever been hosted in Pakistan — and one of a very small number of sites across South Asia in the program’s history, despite SICSS running at 27 sites worldwide this year and over 180 sites globally since it began in 2017.
Over two weeks, participants joined us from across Pakistan, including Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, Gilgit, and others, for an intensive curriculum covering quantitative text analysis, social network analysis, agent-based modeling, causal inference, and the use of large language models in social science research, with a throughline of applying these tools to questions of digital polarization, civic discourse, and the societal impacts of technology in the Global South. Dr. Umberto Mignozzetti (UC San Diego) joined us to deliver the opening keynote, alongside several instructors who led lectures and workshops throughout the institute.
None of this would have happened without Habib University and Tech for Open Minds, who supported the institute, or without our teaching staff and student assistants who made the two weeks run smoothly. My deepest thanks go to my co-organizer, Dr. Qasim Pasta, for building this with me from the ground up.
My hope is that SICSS-Habib marks the start of a lasting computational social science community in Pakistan, and that this cohort is the first of many.