Sociology School
I direct and designed the curriculum for Sociology School, an eight-month advanced programme in computational social science run by Kazakhstan Sociology Lab. It delivers roughly the substance of a one-year MA in data analysis to social researchers across Kazakhstan and Central Asia who arrive with no programming background. Four cohorts have run since 2023, graduating around a hundred researchers.
The programme is blended online and offline and runs across four modules. Three are taught; the fourth, from September to November, is a project module in which participants carry their own research through to a final defence. The curriculum spans sociological theory, research design, R, statistics, data mining and visualisation, NLP, social network analysis, spatial analysis, qualitative methods, causal inference, survey methodology and media analytics.
Courses of my own design
| theory |
Quantitative Sociology of Culture (with M. Safonova and Zh. Aubakirova) |
Sociology School, KSL |
2026 |
| methods |
Research Seminar |
Sociology School, KSL |
2026 |
| ML |
Machine Learning for Social Science |
MA Data Analytics for Politics and Society, HSE University Saint Petersburg campus |
2023 |
| theory |
Contemporary Sociological Theory |
Sociology School, Kazakhstan Sociology Lab |
2023–2026 |
| R |
Data Analysis and Exploratory Analysis in R |
Sociology School, KSL |
2023–2026 |
| ML |
Data Mining |
Sociology School, KSL |
2023–2026 |
| theory |
Introduction to Sociological Theory |
MA Empirical Legal Studies, EUSP |
2022–2023 |
| R |
Exploratory Data Analysis with R |
Bioinformatics Institute, Saint Petersburg |
2021–2024 |
| R |
Introduction to Data Analysis in R + Data Visualization |
MA Data Science / Applied Data Analysis, EUSP × Yandex School of Data Analysis |
2021–2024 |
Summer Schools
| CSS |
AIM-CC 2026 — AI & Methods in Computational Communication A young-scholar conference and research school funded by Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Among the invited speakers were Professor Taha Yasseri of Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), Professor Alexey Bessudnov of the University of Exeter (UK), Professor Miriam Schirmer of the University of Konstanz (Germany) and Başak Taraktaş of Boğaziçi University, along with other leading researchers in the social and computational sciences. |
Kazakhstan Sociology Lab × Nazarbayev University × International Communication Association, Astana |
Co-organiser |
2026 |
| methods |
School of Empirical Legal Studies — From Question to Paper in 7 Days An interdisciplinary winter school on empirical research in law, held annually since the mid-2010s. Under competitive selection, participants (sociologists, jurists, economists and other social scientists) carry a research project from question to draft article over seven days. |
Institute for the Rule of Law, European University at Saint Petersburg |
Co-organiser and mentor |
2022–2026 |
Workshops and short courses
| LLM |
Data Without Data? Using Large Language Models to Advance Social Research in Central Asia |
Nazarbayev University × Central Eurasian Studies Society |
2026 |
| theory |
The Cognitive Turn in Social Research (keynote) |
International Winter School, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University |
2026 |
| theory |
New Surveillance, Old Challenges: The Digitalization of Investigative Work in Russia |
Days of the Institute for the Rule of Law, Yerevan |
2024 |
| methods |
Research Methodology (guest lectures) |
Maqsut Narikbayev University |
2024–2025 |
| theory |
Sociology of Law (guest lectures) |
Maqsut Narikbayev University |
2024–2025 |
| methods |
Contemporary Survey Research and Its Analysis (3 days) |
Public Opinion Research Centre, Atyrau city administration |
2023 |
| R |
Working with Data and Graphics for Police Analytics (1 day) |
Makan Yesbulatov Almaty Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan |
2023 |
| Python |
Web Scraping & Parsing |
Sociology School, Kazakhstan Sociology Lab |
2023–2026 |
| Python |
Python for R Users |
Sociology School, KSL |
2023–2026 |
| Git |
Introduction to Git |
Sociology School, KSL |
2023–2026 |