Distinguished Speaker Series on Social Networks
Awareness of and interest in social networks is growing, and with it research on social networks. This speaker series brings to Notre Dame six outstanding scholars who are doing cutting-edge research on social networks. Because social networks are important in many arenas and institutional settings, we are bring to campus scholars with inter-disciplinary interests spanning not just sociology, political science, anthropology, economics and business, but also connecting to work being done in the physical sciences, mathematics, engineering and computer science.
Each visitor will spend two days on campus, give a public talk (always on a Thursday at 4 p.m.) and hold brownbag discussions with undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. All event dates, times and places will be updated on iCeNSA's scrolling news items on our home page.
As a result of sponsors from across four major colleges at Notre Dame - Arts & Letters, Science, Engineering, and Business - we anticipate that the series will bring together faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates from a wide array of departments and fields who are interested in social networks.
For additional information email icensa@nd.edu
Sponsors
Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts' Henkels Lectures.
Colleges: Arts & Letters, Science, Engineering, Mendoza College of Business.
Departments: Sociology, Anthropology, Economics and Econometrics, Physics, Computer Science and Engineering.
Centers and Institutes: iCeNSA, Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Center for the Study of Social Movements, the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity.

Katherine Faust

Professor, Department of Sociology and Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Irvine

Talk Title:What is Social About Social Networks?
Date and Time:October 8, 2009, 4 p.m.
Place:McKenna Hall, Room 210-214

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    • Abstract:The past decade has seen an explosion of interest in networks across a wide range of disciplines, including biological, technological, semantic, and social networks. Against this backdrop, this talk considers what, if any, features make social networks distinctively social. I argue that leverage on this question will most likely come by viewing human social relations in the context of animal social relations and sociality more generally.
      Visitor Bio:Katherine Faust is coauthor of the influential book Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications (Cambridge University Press) and numerous articles on social networks and network methodology. Her current research focuses on: comparison of network patterns across different forms of social relations and animal species; development of methodology for complex network structures; and understanding the relationship between social networks and demographic processes.
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James Moody

Associate Professor of Sociology, Duke University

Talk Title:More Than a Pretty Picture: Visual Thinking in Network Science.
Date and Time:October 29, 2009, 4 p.m.
Place:McKenna Hall, Room 210-214

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    • Abstract:Visual imagery is a key element of social network research, but often left under-specified. In this talk I review some of the history of social network graphics and identify a set of principled features for effective social network graphics, with particular interest paid to diffusion and dynamic network visualization problems.
      Visitor Bio:Moody's research focuses on the structural dynamics of social networks. The substantive contexts of his work range widely, from high school social network structure to the spread of HIV/AIDs in developing nations. His current projects include a book on the visual history of social networks, collaborations with colleagues at Penn State and Stanford on the dynamics of youth networks, and mapping the dynamics of science collaboration networks to identify the social contexts of good ideas.
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      Diffusion Implications of Network Dynamics
      More Than a Pretty Picture: Visual Thinking in Network Science
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Stephen P. Borgatti

Chellgren Endowed Chair and Professor, Dept of Management, Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky

Talk Title:A network theory of life, the universe, and everything
Date and Time:January 28, 2010, 4 p.m.
Place:McKenna Hall, Room 210-214

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    • Abstract:A recent request-for-proposal by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) invited researchers to develop a broad, generic, adaptable, flexible and modular theory of social networks that spans all relevant disciplines. Having received a grant to do this, my co-workers and I are now faced with actually delivering the "integrated theory". When we began, we assumed the goal was unattainable, but that the journey would be useful in itself. Two years into it, we feel the journey has indeed allowed us to elucidate some fundamental issues in social network analysis. But in addition, we have surprised ourselves in becoming more positive about the possibility of integrating large portions of network theory.
      Visitor Bio:Dr. Steve Borgatti is the Paul Chellgren Chair of Management at the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. His research interests include social networks, knowledge management, culture and cognition and mathematical/computational approaches to organizational theory. Dr. Borgatti earned his B.A. in Anthropology from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in Mathematical Social Science from the University of California, Irvine.
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      A network theory of life, the universe, and everything
      Induced Centralities: A method for deriving theoretically relevant centralities
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Brian Uzzi

Richard L. Thomas Distinguished chair in leadership at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, co-director of NICO, the Northwestern Institute in Complex Systems, professorships in Sociology and in the McCormick School of Engineering

Talk Title: Outstanding Scientific Impact: Formation and Performance Patterns of Scientists' Collaboration Networks
Date and Time:February 11, 2010, 4 p.m.
Place:McKenna Hall, Room 100-104

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    • Abstract:We review the literature showing that outstanding scientific, patenting, and artistic work is increasingly the domain of teams, not individuals. We then examine how the global network structure of a field within which teams of collaborators are embedded influences their success, highlighting the importance of small world networks. Finally, we model how rules for choosing collaborators based on their status or cohesiveness can lead to global networks that appear to enhance or deplete the performance of the teams embedded within them. Our analyses use data on 21 million papers from the Web of Science database - the known universe of all scientific papers worldwide - as well as agent based modeling data.
      Visitor Bio:Brian Uzzi is the Richard L. Thomas Distinguished Chair in Leadership at the Kellogg School of Management. His other appoints include, professor of sociology, professor of industrial engineering and management science at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, and Co-Director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO). His award winning and highly cited research uses social network analysis and complexity theory to model creativity, contagion, and outstanding human achievement. At Kellogg, he teaches courses on leadership, persuasion, and change management and has won 8 teaching awards, including teacher of the year 3 times. Brian speaks at conferences and advises major companies worldwide on building better networks, collaboration, innovation, leadership, and selling new ideas. His research on team science focuses on the rise of teams in the production of high impact science, the relationship between scientists’ networks and their creativity, and the role of on-line communities in creating and sustaining scientific collaboration.
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Delia S. Baldassarri

Assistant Professor of Sociology, Princeton University

Talk Title:Making Sense of Politics. A relational Approach to public Opinion.
Date and Time:March 18, 2010, 4 p.m.
Place:McKenna Hall, Room 100-104

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    • Abstract:Americans have become politically more divided yet people with different political views and party identifications live, work, and enjoy spending time together. How do people deal with the conflicting political views within their social networks? The talk outlines the basic principles of a relational approach to the study of public opinion, according to which political preferences are shaped by the interplay of socio-demographic characteristics, individual interests, and social influence. In this perspective, a collective identity (i.e., party identification) emerges from patterns of micro-interactions and crystallizes at the macro level into a shared system of interconnected beliefs. To showcase this approach, network analysis techniques are used to (1) model dynamics of interpersonal influence in political discussion networks and study the simultaneous evolution of political preferences and social relationships and (2) develop a novel network analysis method that is applied to a large set of political attitudes (American National Election Studies 1984-2004) to identify different ways in which political beliefs are interconnected.
      Visitor Bio:Delia Baldassarri is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University. Her research interests are in the fields of economic sociology, political sociology, and methodology of social research, with a focus on social networks and influence dynamics, collective action, cooperation and economic development, human decision-making, public opinion and political behavior, civil society, conflict, and social integration.
      Her current research projects include a field experiment on the impact of social and spatial networks on cooperation and economic development in rural Uganda; and a research on public opinion and political representation in the USA. She has written articles on civil society inter-organizational networks, formal models of collective action, dynamics of interpersonal influence, political polarization, public opinion and voting behavior. She has been awarded the Italian Political Science Association Prize for the Best Book in Political Science for her book The Simple Art of Voting. The Cognitive Shortcuts of Italian Voters (Il Mulino, 2005) and the Outstanding Article Award from the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.
      Recent Publications:
      D. Baldassarri, A. Gelman (2008)
      Partisans Without Constraint: Political Polarization and Trends in American Public Opinion.
      American Journal of Sociology, forthcoming.
      D. Baldassarri, M. Diani (2007)
      The Integrative Power of Civic Networks.
      American Journal of Sociology, 113(3): 735-80.
      D. Baldassarri, P. Bearman (2007)
      Dynamics of Political Polarization.
      American Sociological Review, 72: 784-811.
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Douglas R. White

Professor, Department of Anthropology and the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, Editor-in-Chief of Structure and Dynamics

Talk Title:Networks: History Behind Our Backs (Evolutionary Learning and Globalization Policies as Competitive Network-Building1300-2010)
Date and Time:March 25, 2010, 4 p.m.
Place:McKenna Hall, Room 100-104

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    • Abstract:This paper aims at sharpening the network analyses of historical processes in Eurasia and Africa in the last millennium. I examine the regular increments of policy-driven “evolutionary learning” of states in developing the technologies for attempts at economic and political domination and the effects that competition and warfare have on the growth and network structure of trade routes. Models of network properties are used to show effects of and/or consequences for: (1) mercantile betweenness versus financial flow centralities, (2) national government control of trade versus periods of malfeasance and corruption, (3) policies protecting domestic manufacture versus elitewealth, (4) periods of price equilibrium versus collapse in the global economy, (5) the the emergence of Kondratieff and shorter business cycles, (6) the mobility of nations in the postwar global economy and (7) issues of war and peace, private and government armies.
      Visitor Bio:Douglas White is interested in how societies, cultures, social roles and historical agents of change evolve dynamically out of multiple networks of social action. To what extent do diffuse "weak-tie" structures of matrimonial and kinship networks, for example, operate to construct social class, ethnicity, and the particular social structures, gender roles, social cognition, etc., of local communities embedded in a larger political economy? How does the network structure of the world political economy engender the opportunity and constraint structures of more localized social activity? White works with several types of comparative data with longitudinal time depth (kinship and marriage networks; demographic baseline studies; global political events and economic exchange).
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