Bags, Vectors & Transformers: A Methods Workshop in Computational Text Analysis

Ever wished you could analyze thousands of texts without reading them all? This multi-day hands-on course introduces WASS PhD students to quantitative text analysis using Python, taking you from the fundamentals to cutting-edge methods. We will cover core bag-of-words approaches — including word frequencies, TF-IDF, and topic modeling — before moving into word embeddings, from static (Word2Vec, GloVe) to contextual embeddings (think BERT). No prior knowledge of computational text analysis needed!

General information

Dates:	October 12-15, 2026
Contact person logistics:	Marcella Haan
Contact person content:	Denise Roth
Credits:	1 ECTS
Venue:	Wageningen campus

Lecturer

Denise Roth, MSc (Strategic Communication)

Target Group

WASS PhD candidates

Programme:

• Day 1: Working with Text Data in Python
• Day 2: Bag-of-Words Approaches
• Day 3: Static Word Embeddings
• Day 4: Contextual Embeddings
• Day 5: Individual Online Session

The sessions are from 10.00-16.00h, there will be a lunch included on day 1-4.

Course fees

WGS PhDs with TSP	€ 75
Other PhDs, postdocs and academic staff	€ 190
Participants from the private sector	€ 225

Cancellation conditions

Participants can cancel their registration free of charge 1 month before the course starts. A cancellation fee of 100% applies if a participant cancels his/her registration less than 1 month prior to the start of the course.

The organisers have the right to cancel the course no later than one month before the planned course start date in the case that the number of registrations does not reach the minimum.

The participants will be notified of any changes at their e-mail addresses.