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Chair of Political Science, Social Data Science

Portrait of Prof. Marc Ratkovic

Professor Marc Ratkovic, Ph.D.

Welcome to our website!  Here at the Chair of Social Data Science, we are working to integrate machine learning and deep learning methods into practical social science methodology.  The research and teaching at the chair focuses on utilizing Large Language Models (LLMs) for statistical inference and causal inference.  Our work has appeared in top journals across political science, statistics, and computer science.

We are building a team of top researchers, an integrated server system, a Masters level curriculum, and a series of events all focused on pushing quantitative and computational social science forwards. 

You can find more information throughout this site.
Thank you for your interest!

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News

Portait von Luis Götze
Luis Götze joins the group
We welcome Luis Götze to the group! Luis Götze joined the group in July as a Researcher and Teaching Assistant. Currently enrolled in the Mannheim Master in Social Data Science, he brings a unique interdisciplinary background in International Relations and Data Science. His research focuses on the ...
Group of sudents attending a lecture
Interview with Prof. Ratkovic on the results of last fall's hackathon event and the role of AI in science
Last fall Prof. Ratkovic, his colleague Thomas Gschwend and Springer Nature  organized a hackathon with 22 international participants to explore how AI can support or facilitate scientific writing. A new article by Jan-Martin Wiarda discusses some of the results as well as perspectives by Prof. ...
Group of researchers in front of the School of Social Sciences building.
New pre-print article: Results from our AI field experiment are here!
How can AI support or facilitate scientific writing? Last fall Prof. Ratkovic, his colleague Thomas Gschwend and Springer Nature  organized a hackathon with 22 international participants to explore this question. The results of the field experiment are now available online as a pre-print ...
Thumbnail of the YouTube video of Prof. Ratkovic's talk
Talk at University:Future Festival
Prof. Ratkovic was a speaker at the University:Future Festival 2025, which took place on May 13 to 15, 2025 in Berlin, Braunschweig, Nürnberg, Graz / Austria, Zurich / Switzerland and online. His talk was titled „Academic Writing: A Field Experiment Testing GPT's Ability to Foster Clarity and ...

Contact

Portrait of Dr. Birgitta Schirmer.

Dr. Birgitta Schirmer

Secretary / Foreign Language Assistant
The secretariat is best contacted by e-mail or via MS Teams.
University of Mannheim
School for Social Sciences
Political Science, Social Data Science
A 5, 6
Building B – Room B129
68159 Mannheim