Biography

Corinna joined the Centre for Research in Social Simulation at the Department of Sociology in August 2008 as a Research Fellow. Her academic background is in Philosophy (LSE BSc MSc) and Computer Science (KCL PhD), where her PhD Instinct for Detection developed a logic for abductive reasoning. Corinna has worked as a policy researcher in the private sector before joining Surrey.

Research interests

Currently Corinna is the PI on an AHRC Research Grant on collective reasoning in agent-based modelling, titled Collective Reasoning as a Moral Point of View. Her research interests are the application of computational methods in the social sciences, in particular to areas of normative and deviant behaviour. She has published a book Modelling Norms, co-authored with Nigel Gilbert, providing a systematic analysis of the contribution of agent-based modelling to the study of social norms and deviant behaviour. She is interested in decision mechanisms, in particular collective decision-making and context dependency of decisions. She is currently working on a model of collective decision making for the analysis to the weakening of the Mafia in Southern Italy. Previous models were on dynamic social networks and situational action in juvenile delinquency and on opinion radicalisation.

Given her philosophy of social science background Corinna is also interested in methodological and epistemological aspects of agent-based modelling and social simulation and has published on explanation and of context validity in modelling.

Recently Corinna has been developing a teaching stream for computational modelling in the social sciences with a periodically running short course Agent-based Modelling for the Social Scientist and the MSc Computational Policy Modelling.

Teaching

Corinna will be teaching Study Skills and Interdisciplinary Research this year.