Welcome!

QuantLab is a new network group aiming to bring together social scientists at the University of Melbourne and beyond to share insights in quantitative methods and research.

Co-founded by Seraphine F. Maerz (Political Science) and Irma Mooi-Reci (Sociology), QuantLab is an inclusive network that welcomes everyone interested in learning (more) about new quantitative methods and computational techniques. We believe in knowledge sharing and offer learning seminars (schedule below) as well as free online tutorials about innovations in data management and analysis, and a platform for exchange and code sharing (R, Stata, Python, etc.).

We collaborate with Instats to provide online training sessions on the latest tools and techniques in quantitative research, see our instats workshops here.

Come and join us for our Quant events on the campus of the University of Melbourne, RSVP here!

Schedule 2026

We plan to launch our 2026 schedule - a new series on AI for Social Sciences - in late 2025. Stay tuned and please let us know if you would like to present a session on this topic!

Schedule 2025

We meet in Linkway, 4th floor John Medley Building.

Date	Time	Topic	Presenter
03/02/25	14:00-15:00 (no lunch)	Intro to Causal Inference and Treatment Effects	Dr. Chuck Huber, Director of Statistical Outreach, StataCorp LLC
11/02/25	03:00-09:00	Using AI for Text Analysis: An Introduction (online event, free for all people from UniMelb, register here	Dr. Seraphine F. Maerz
18/02/25	10:00-16:00	Using AI for Text Analysis: Advanced Applications (online event, free for all people from UniMelb, register here	Dr. Seraphine F. Maerz
03/03/25	12:00-13:00	Our new collaboration with Instats and Introduction to version control with Git	Prof. Michael Zyphur, Dr. Mar Quiroga
20/03/25	09:30-12:30	Partner event at Melbourne Connect: Get started with R	MDAP Melbourne Data Analytics Platform
31/03/25	12:00-13:00	Regression Discontinuity Design	Dr. Amrita Mitra
14/04/25	12:00-13:00	Shut up and git	Dr. Tomasz Woźniak
12/05/25	12:00-13:00	Quantitative Text Analysis for Social Sciences	Dr. Maxim Ananyev
26/05/25	12:00-13:00	Python for Social Science Research: Tips, Tricks, and Lessons Learned	Dr. Daniel Russo-Batterham
28/07/25	12:00-13:00	Introduction to Structural Modelling for Social Scientists Using R Packages bsvars and bsvarSIGNs	Dr. Tomasz Woźniak
11/08/25	12:00-13:00	Building Your Own RAG Pipeline from Scratch!	Taylor Ey

Schedule 2024

We meet in Arts West Research Lounge. Lunch is included and kindly sponsored by the School of Social and Political Science.

Date	Time	Topic	Presenter
05/08/24	11:30-13:00	Launch of QuantLab 🎉 Intro to R and Quarto	Seraphine F. Maerz, Irma Mooi-Reci
26/08/24	12:00-13:00	Using Stata for panel data	Irma Mooi-Reci
09/09/24	12:00-13:00	Spatial econometrics: An introduction	Ed Goldring
10/09/24	10:00-11:30	An Introduction to Computational Social Science (online event within Social Science weeks, register here)	Jason Thompson (MCDS)
07/10/24	10:00-16:00	Quarto in RStudio: Writing Reproducible & Dynamic Research Papers (online event with Instats, register here, free of charge for all people from UniMelb)	Seraphine F. Maerz
14/10/24	12:00-13:00	Quantitative text analysis in R	Seraphine F. Maerz
28/10/24	12:00-13:00	Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in Stata	Harry Ganzeboom
26/11/24	10:00-16:00	Using AI for Text Analysis in R (online event with Instats, register here, free of charge for all people from UniMelb)	Seraphine F. Maerz