Participation at the IC2S2 2025 in Norrköping, Sweden

Between July 21st and July 24th, 2025, the International Conference for Computational Social Science (IC2S2) was held in Norrköping, Sweden. This year’s event was hosted by the Swedish Excellence Center for Computational Social Science in collaboration with the Institute for Analytical Sociology (IAS), gathering researchers from a wide range of disciplines — from sociology and political science to computer science and statistics — united by a shared mission: to understand the social world through large-scale data and computational methods.

The conference, known for its interdisciplinary spirit, attracted both early-career scholars and established experts. A major theme this year was the rapidly evolving role of large language models (LLMs) in computational social science — a topic that generated considerable excitement across all sessions.

The structure of IC2S2 2025 included a dedicated day of workshops, followed by three days packed with lightning talks, keynote speeches, panel discussions, and poster presentations. This format offered participants a rich and diverse experience across both foundational methods and cutting-edge research.

Clara Clipea, Research Associate at our Center, took part in the conference with a poster presentation focused on her current research: conflict-related damage prediction using satellite imagery. Her work leverages computer vision techniques to assess the level of destruction following conflict, offering critical tools for humanitarian response and policy planning.

We are also pleased to note that Daniel Racek, who recently joined the Center as a team lead, contributed to IC2S2 2025 while still affiliated with LMU, co-authoring the project “The Digital Authoritarian: Everyday behavioral patterns collected with smartphones predict authoritarianism”, which explores how smartphone-derived behavioral data can reveal individuals’ authoritarian tendencies.

IC2S2 2025 was a platform to share research, gain feedback, and connect with global peers tackling similar challenges—bringing fresh ideas and partnerships that strengthen the Center for Crisis Early Warning’s use of cutting-edge computational methods to anticipate and respond to emerging crises.

Picture: © CCEW, Clara Clipea