Upcoming Events – Talking to Machines

Synthetic Replication Games Workshop

The IMEBESS 2025 Synthetic Replication Games is a one-day in-person workshop organised by the Talking to Machines team in the context of a large replication project exploring the potential of large language models (LLMs) to augment human samples in experimental social science. This workshop invites researchers of all backgrounds and career stages to collaborate in adapting experimental studies from top-tier journals into a standardised format and replicate them using a variety of LLMs. The results will be presented in a dedicated round table at IMEBESS 2025, and contributors will be recognised as co-authors on the final publication.

The workshop will be held on 21^th May 2025 in the IMEBESS conference venue.

Further details and the registration form are available here: https://imebess.org/srg/.

Talking to machines – virtual workshop

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85816505135?pwd=J9yGm1BbDk2XwTvYbZjey6CmSoddyV.1
Meeting ID: 858 1650 5135
Passcode: 708335

May schedule

Friday 3rd May 3.30-4.30pm (UK)
Presentation Title: TBC
Ben Lira Luttges (University of Pennsylvania)
Friday 10th May 3.00-4.00pm (UK)
Presentation Title: TBC
Apostolos Filippas (Fordham University)

Large Language Models @ EPSA Madrid 2025

We are organizing an EPSA Madrid 2025 pre-conference that will assemble researchers working with Large Language Models (LLMs) the focus will be on the application of LLMs to research being conducted in the social sciences. The broad themes that we expect to cover include:

Data generation: this includes the role of AI agents as subjects in experiments, as enumerators, or as confederates; adaptive experimental design.
Data collection and curation: examples might include the compilation of historical and contemporary records videos and text.
Data analysis: text analysis; the analysis of treatment effects associated with text and image vignette; the role of LLMs in the analysis of conversations and open-ended survey responses.
Design: LLM guidance in the design of experimental protocols and treatment arms.
Technical advances including the incorporation of non-text data such as images, video and audio; transformer-based models; and DNNs.
Safety and ethics: the ethical challenges of incorporating LLMs into social science research; efforts to address safety and LLM model development and deployment.
LLMs, the economy and governance: understanding how the rapid introduction and adoption of LLMs will affect the economy and governance.

We are at an early stage of incorporating LLM applications into our social science research. Hence this European event is a great opportunity to showcase the innovative research that is being conducted by scholars world-wide. We encourage paper proposal submissions that touch on any of these themes. The workshop format offers presenters a unique opportunity to showcase their work and get constructive and thoughtful feedback.

The pre-conference workshop takes place Wednesday June 25^th, a day before EPSA Madrid 2025. The workshop will be held in the same venue as EPSA Madrid 2025. We cannot provide travel or accommodation support for participants. For those who are accepted to participate, we will provide a pre-workshop dinner on Tuesday June 24^th and breakfast and lunch during the workshop.

Submission application deadline: 28 February 2025.

Submit Application

Workshop on the 2024 U.S. Presential Election Polling

Date: Monday, 25^th November 2024
Time: 9.30am – 5pm
Location: Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford (UK)

The post-election workshop is an opportunity to critically assess the various data collection and modeling strategies employed for pre-election estimates of the vote share of the major U.S. presidential candidates over the course of the campaign. Leading pollsters from academia and industry will critically assess the state of pre-election polling in the aftermath of the 2024 Presidential Elections.

9:00am – 9:30am	Coffee
9:30am – 10:00am	Welcome and Introductions
10:00am – 11:00am	National Election Studies & Commercial Polling – Shanto Iyengar, Professor (Stanford) and Principal Investigator of the American National Election Study (ANES) – Jane Green, Professor (Nuffield College), President of the British Polling Council, and Principal Investigator British Election Study – Clifford Young, President Public Affairs (IPSOS U.S.A.)
11:00am – 11:30am	Coffee Break
11:30am – 12:30pm	Advances in Model-Based Election Election-Polling – Lucas Leemann, Professor (University of Zurich) – Kosuke Imai, Professor (Harvard University)
12:30pm – 1:30pm	Lunch
1:30pm – 2:30pm	Polling Aggregation: Resilience to Systematic Bias – Eli McKown-Dawson, LSE and Silver Bulletin – Steve Fisher, Professor (University of Oxford) – Martin Strabe and Oliver Hawkins (The Financial Times)
2:30pm – 2:45pm	Coffee
2:45pm – 3:45pm	Election Forecasting: Mapping the State of the Art – Mary Steigmeier, Professor (University of Missouri) – Philippe Mongrain, Post-doctoral Researcher (University of Antwerp)
3:45pm – 4:00pm	Coffee
4:00pm – 5:00pm	Silicon Sampling for Public Opinion Polling – Roberto Cerina, Assistant Professor (University of Amsterdam) – Ray Duch, Professor (Nuffield College) – Ben Warner, Founder (Electric Twin)