Data Science & Artificial Intelligence SIG

A special interest group of the Society for Social Work and Research for scholars who study artificial intelligence or use computational methods in social work research.

The SIG connects researchers across career stages who apply machine learning, natural language processing, geospatial analysis, and other computational methods to social work questions. It meets each January at the SSWR Annual Conference and runs programming through the year.

Activities

• Annual SIG meeting. The SIG meets each January at the SSWR Annual Conference to share work in progress and set priorities for the year.
• Methods workshops. SIG members lead hands-on workshops at SSWR. Recent topics include NLP for social media data (2025) and implementing large language models for social work research (2026).
• Member directory. The searchable directory lists members by social work topic and by method, with contact information for reaching potential collaborators.
• Student programming. The SIG runs events for emerging scholars, including a Doctoral Student Networking Event co-sponsored with the GCSW Harnessing Technology for Social Good initiative.

Co-conveners

• Cheng Ren, University at Albany, SUNY (cren@albany.edu)
• Nari Yoo, University of Michigan (nariyoo@umich.edu)
• Woojin Jung, Rutgers University (w.jung@rutgers.edu)

News

• The SIG has a new home on the web (July 15, 2026)
• Recap: Doctoral Student Networking Event (May 18, 2026)
• SIG launches a searchable member directory (March 28, 2026)
• Workshop at SSWR 2026: Implementing LLMs for social work research (January 15, 2026)
• Workshop at SSWR 2025: Analyzing social media data with NLP (January 16, 2025)

Join

Add yourself to the member directory through this Google Form. The form takes about two minutes, and new entries appear on the site automatically.