Randall Collins is Professor of Sociology Emeritus at University of Pennsylvania. His books include The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998), Interaction Ritual Chains (2004), Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory (2008); a sociological novel, Civil War Two (2018); and Charisma: Micro-sociology of Power and Influence (2020). Most recent is Explosive Conflict: Time-Dynamics of Violence, published in 2022. His current project is on the sociology of creativity in music.

Abstract of the keynote talk.

Betina Hollstein is Chair of Sociology at the University of Bremen and directs Qualiservice, a national data center for qualitative social science research data. She received her doctorate degree at Freie Universität Berlin and worked at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Universität Mannheim and Humboldt Universität Berlin, before she was appointed as professor of sociology at Universität Hamburg (2009-2014) and Universität Bremen (since 2014). Betina Hollstein’s work is centered around personal networks, social inequality and methods of network research. She is especially interested in understanding network dynamics across the life course and network effects such as changes in personal networks after the loss of the spouse or how personal networks affect the transition from school to work. With respect to such questions, she combines the structural network approach with more actor-centered aspects, looking at how network resources and social capital are activated and how network practices differ between social groups. In studying network processes and mechanisms, Betina Hollstein champions the use of qualitative approaches (e.g. 2011, in Scott and Carrington’ s Sage Handbook of Social Network Analysis) and mixed methods research designs (2014, Cambridge University Press, ed. with Silvia Dominguez). Current projects tackle visual methods for network data collection and innovative combinations of qualitative methods and computational social sciences.

Abstract of the keynote talk.

Ulrik Brandes is professor for social networks at ETH Zürich.

His background is in computer science with a Diploma degree from RWTH Aachen and a PhD from the University of Konstanz. After his habilitation in 2002 he became associate professor at the University of Passau in the same year, and professor for algorithmics at the University of Konstanz one year later. He is vice-president of the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA), coordinating editor of Network Science, and on the editorial boards of Social Networks, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications, and Computer Science Review.

His main interests are in network analysis and visualization, with application to social networks in particular. He is a co-author of the visone software for network analysis and the GraphML data format. Following a DFG-funded Reinhart Koselleck-Project (2011-2017) on Social Network Algorithmics, he takes a shot at improving the methodological foundations of network science. As a principal investigator in the ERC Synergy Project NEXUS 1492 (2013-2019) he was working on reconstructing archaeological networks from fragmented and heterogeneous observations. Currently, he is increasing his involvement in soccer analytics.

Abstract of the keynote talk.

Daniel A. McFarland is a Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology and Organizational Behavior at Stanford University. His training is in sociology and philosophy with degrees from the University of Chicago. He teaches courses at in Social Network Analysis, Sociology of Science, Computational Sociology, Relational Sociology, Education Data Science, and the Sociology of Play and Games. His research spans a wide assortment of topics like social network dynamics and visualization, micro-foundations of relations, student resistance and social change, and the diffusion of knowledge innovations. You can learn more about Dan here.

Jan A. Fuhse is currently a Heisenberg Fellow at the Department of Social Sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He completed his PhD in sociology from Universität Stuttgart in 2007 with a dissertation on the role of social networks for the acculturation and ethnic identification of Italian migrants in Germany. During a post­doc (funded by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation) at Columbia University 2007­ - 2008, he worked with Harrison White and Charles Tilly in the theory of social networks. From 2009 to 2013 he was an assistant professor of political sociology at the University of Bielefeld, completing his Habilitation in 2011. Since 2014, he chairs the section for Sociological Network Research in the German Sociological Association.

Fuhse’s research focuses on communication and meaning in social networks, on social networks in inequality, on interethnic relations, and on political constellations. Recent publications include: “Embedding the Stranger: Ethnic Categories and Cultural Differences in Social Networks” (Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2012), “Theorizing Social Networks: Relational Sociology of and around Harrison White” (International Review of Sociology, 2015), and “Networks from Communication"(European Journal of Social Theory, 2015).

Iina Hellsten is an associate professor at the Corporate Communication program group of the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, ASCoR. Her research focuses on the dynamics of communication networks, in particular in social media settings. Previously, she has hold positions as a post-doctoral researcher at ASCoR, researcher at the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and an assistant and associate professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work has been published in communication sciences (e.g. in Science Communication, New Media & Society, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication) and in information sciences (e.g. in JASIST and Internet Research).

Camille Roth has been holding a research professorship at CNRS since 2008 (“chercheur CNRS” i.e., tenured without teaching duties) in computer science while he also had a couple of tenured university positions in sociology, at Sciences Po as Associate Professor (“professeur”, 2016-18) and in Toulouse as Assistant Professor (“maître de conférences”, 2007-08). His research thus lies at the interface between social and computational sciences, featuring keywords such as socio-semantic systems, social cognition, algorithms and mathematical sociology.

He founded in 2012 and currently leads the computational social science team at Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin (CNRS/Humboldt) and currently supervises a team of several doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. He is currently the recipient of an ERC Consolidator grant called Socsemics on socio-semantic networks and over the past decade has been global or local PI for several multi-institution research projects, both at the French and European level, on blog networks, scientific communities, and peer-to-peer platforms, including Webfluence, Algopol and Algodiv (on informational dynamics of the digital public space) and QLectives (EU IP on quality collectives in socio-technical communities). He has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications. He is also associate member of CAMS (Centre d'Analyse et de Mathématique Sociales, CNRS-EHESS).

Elisa Bellotti is a senior lecturer of the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester, member of the Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis, and associate editor of Social Networks journal. Before arriving in Manchester in 2008, Elisa worked as research fellow at University of Turin and University of Bozen, Italy. She completed her Ph.D in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research in 2006 at Catholic University of Milan. Elisa Bellotti studies social networks and how they shape and are shaped by our social environment. Topics she commonly investigates are gender, science, criminal networks, personal relationships, mixed methods. Previously she also studied consumption, and she is developing an interest in health networks.

Johan Koskinen is Senior Lecturer In Social Network Analysis at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne. He was awarded his PhD in Statistics from Stockholm University and then has worked at the universities of Stockholm, Oxford and Manchester. Johan has contributed to the development of a number of statistical models and inference procedures for social networks, in particular exponential random graph models (ERGM) and stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM).

Dr Peng Wang is a network methodologist who specializes in the development of statistical models for social network analysis. With a combination of skills in computer science, mathematics and statistics, and social network theory and analysis, Dr Wang has detailed understanding of the advantages of exponential random graph models (ERGMs) for social networks, as well as the challenges that need to be overcome. Collaborating with world renowned leaders in the field of social network analysis, Dr Wang personally contributed to the advance of ERGMs in model specifications, methods for simulations and estimations techniques, computational efficiency and model robustness, and model interpretations and empirical implications. Dr Wang developed the PNet software package for the simulation and estimation of ERGMs. The PNet software serves as an essential part of the SNA research team in Melbourne – MelNet, as well as the general SNA community. Dr Peng Wang’s work contribute to the development of ERGMs and PNet into cases of bipartite, multivariate, longitudinal, nodal attribute based and multilevel network models, with methodological developments on model specifications, conditional estimations on snowball sampled network data, models with missing network data, and models for large networks. He has publications in the fields of Management, Social Ecological Systems, Networks among Adolescents, Disease Transmission and Public Health Issues, Research Collaboration Networks, Political Networks and Interlocking Directorates networks. Dr Wang is currently working at the Centre for Transformative Innovation (CTI), Swinburne University of Technology, focuses on the development of a new statistical framework for the co- evolution of network structure and nodal attributes, and the application of such methods.

Justus Uitermark is Professor of Urban Geography at the University of Amsterdam. Uitermark uses relational and geographic approaches to understand social change. He studies how processes like gentrification, segregation, and contention play out at the intersection of urban and online spaces, using Amsterdam as his main case study. Some of his work focuses on Instagram, asking how the platform shapes subjectivities, groups, and environments. A related line of work revolves around the epistemology and methodology of digital and computational research, arguing for situated and contextualized analysis. Uitermark further studies rapid urbanization and collective organization, focusing on Accra and Istanbul. In these different research agendas, a recurrent question is how power relations are consolidated or challenged.

Some recent key publications include Longing for Wikitopia, Reassembling the city through Instagram, Cities and Social Movements, Geographical Network Analysis, and For a Heterodox Computational Social Science. More publications and information can be found at www.justusuitermark.nl