Call for Papers - 9th UK Social Networks Conferenc

Dear Colleagues

The 9th UK Social Networks Conference will be held in Greenwich, London, June 27-29th 2013. This is a lively, multi-disciplinary, annual event, with participation from across Europe and beyond and a vibrant social programme. The venue is the superb, baroque maritime campus of the University of Greenwich.

Conference Website: http://www2.gre.ac.uk/about/schools/business/services/events/events/current/nusnc

Call for papers
We invite submissions of extended abstracts on theories, methods, or applications of social network analysis.

Topics include, but are not limited to:
• Policy, political and governance networks
• Business and organisational networks
• Knowledge, innovation and communication networks
• Interlocking directors and elite networks
• Economic and entrepreneurial networks
• Citations and scientific networks
• Social capital, brokerage and structural holes
• Models of network analysis
• Geographical networks
• Theory of relational sociology
• Cross-sectional and longitudinal network datasets
• Computational models and agent-based simulations of networks
• Information diffusion and innovation through social networks
• Online communities and social networking
• Methods for interrupting clandestine and terrorist networks
• Epidemiological networks
• Professional practice in network analysis.


Deadline for submissions: 19 April, 2013.

Bruce and Dimitris

Call for papers “Historical Network Research” at the XXXIII. Sunbelt Conference

Call for papers “Historical Network Research” at the XXXIII. Sunbelt Conference, May 21-26, 2013 – University of Hamburg, Germany

The concepts and methods of social network analysis in historical research are recently being used not only as a mere metaphor but are increasingly applied in practice. In the last decades several studies in the social sciences proved that formal methods derived from social network analysis can be fruitfully applied to selected bodies of historical data as well. These studies however tend to be strongly influenced by concerns, standards of data processing, and, above all, epistemological paradigms that have their roots in the social sciences. Among historians, the term network has been used in a metaphorical sense alone for a long time. It was only recently that this has changed.

We invite papers which successfully integrate social network analysis methods and historical research methods and reflect on the added value of their methodologies. Topics could cover (but are not limited to) network analyses of correspondences, social movements, kinship or economic systems in any historical period.

Submission will be closing on December 31 at 11:59:59 EST. Please limit your abstract to 250 words. Please submit your abstract here: http://www.abstractserver.com/sunbelt2013/absmgm/ and select “Historical Network Research” as session title in the drop down box on the submission site. Please put a note in the "additional notes" box on the abstract submission form that states Marten During and Martin Stark as the session organizers.

For further information on the venue and conference registration see: http://hamburg-sunbelt2013.org/, for any questions regarding the panel, please get in touch with the session organizers.

Session organizers: Marten During, Radboud University Nijmegen, martenduering@gmail.com Martin Stark, University of Hamburg, martin.stark@wiso.uni-hamburg.de

Check https://sites.google.com/site/historicalnetworkresearch/ for a detailed bibliography, conferences, screencasts and other resources.

XXXIII Sunbelt Registration now open

XXXIII Sunbelt Social Networks Conference of the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA), May 21 - 26, 2013 in Hamburg, Germany

We are pleased to inform you that Registration for Sunbelt 2013, including registration for Pre-Conference Workshops, is now open!

Please follow this link provided by INSNA:https://insna.memberclicks.net/index.php?option=com_mc&view=mc&mcid=form_132482

Early Conference Registration: before 11 February 2013
Regular Conference Registration: 11 February – 15 April 2013
Late/On-Site Conference Registration: after 15 April 2013


Find out more about the pre-conference workshops: http://hamburg-sunbelt2013.org/workshops/

Find out more about the venue and conference registration http://hamburg-sunbelt2013.org/

Email address for local organizers of the Sunbelt 2013 conference is: sunbelt2013@uni-hamburg.de

See you in Hamburg, the organizing committee:

Betina Hollstein
Sonja Drobnic
Michael Schnegg

Call for Abstracts for 3rd Track on “Words and Networks”

Call for Abstracts for 3rd Track on “Words and Networks” at 2013 Sunbelt Social Network Conference

We are soliciting abstracts for a special theme track dedicated to interdisciplinary, cutting edge research that brings together text analysis and network analysis. This track is part of the Sunbelt conference, which will be held in Hamburg, Germany, May 21-26, 2013 (http://hamburg-sunbelt2013.org/).

While text analysis and network analysis have evolved into mature yet still quickly advancing fields, work at their intersection is less prevalent. We are looking for theoretical, empirical, methodological and computational contributions that jointly utilize natural language text data and network data. By jointly considering text data and network data we can analyze networks along multiple dimensions of human behavior. This has facilitated eminent work on language change, the adoption of beliefs and sentiments, and collective problem solving through information propagation, to name a few areas. Presentations of innovative technical solutions that are freely available to researchers are also welcome. We invite submissions at the intersection of information/ semantic and social networks, for instance addressing questions such as:
• Who is talking to whom (social network) about what (semantic network)?
• How do information, opinions and rumors emerge, spread and vanish in society and online?
• How can we extract and model the structure of socio-technical networks based on text data?

 - The overarching goal with this workshop is to bring together people that bridge the gap between text analysis and network analysis, and to discuss current advances and challenges in this area.

How to submit an abstract:
Deadline: December 31 at 11:59:59 EST.
Length: 250 words or less. This does not include the title.
Where: http://www.abstractserver.com/sunbelt2013/absmgm/. When submitting your abstract, please select “Words and networks” as session title in the drop down box on the submission site (this comes up during your last step of submitting). To be extra sure please put a note in the "additional notes" box on the abstract submission form that states "Diesner/ Gloor" as the session organizers. For more information about abstract submission and conference registration see http://hamburg-sunbelt2013.org/conference-registration-abstract-submission/

Track organizers:
- Jana Diesner, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Peter Gloor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology


We are looking forward to your contributions. Email any questions to jdiesner@illinois.edu or pgloor@mit.edu.

Regards, Jana

Jana Diesner, PhD
Assistant Professor
The iSchool (Graduate School of Library and Information Science) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Cell: 412 519 7576
Web: http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~jdiesner/

Call for Papers - Session on "Mechanisms of Change in Organizational Networks"

Call for Papers - Session on "Mechanisms of Change in Organizational Networks"
XXXIII. Sunbelt Conference, May 21 - 26, 2013 in Hamburg, Germany


Session organizers:
Henning Hillmann, University of Mannheim, Germany (hillmann@uni-mannheim.de) Valery Yakubovich, ESSEC Business School, France (yakubovich@essec.fr)

One of the most exciting areas in recent studies of organizational networks concerns the emergence of new organizational forms (e.g. the volume on Emergence of Organizations and Markets, by John Padgett and Woody Powell): where do markets and organizations come from? What social structural conditions and contexts are particularly favorable to facilitate innovation in organizations and elsewhere? Social science research tends to be attracted to newness. Yet, just as important are questions about the persistence of established organizational networks: why exactly are some organizational networks more likely to survive than others? What social mechanisms may account for their long-run survival and the spill-over effects they may have into other areas of organizational life? At the same time, we routinely observe organizational change. Does such change emerge endogenously, from within organizational networks? Or, is it more likely to be triggered by exogenous shocks? We believe that a promising approach to answering these questions seeks to identify the micro-foundations and causal mechanisms that give rise to various organizational macro-structures (e.g. Peter Hedstrom and Peter Bearman, eds., Handbook of Analytical Sociology).

We invite submissions that advance our understanding of the emergence, persistence and change of organizational networks. We particularly welcome contributions that try to solve interesting empirical puzzles and advance theory through mechanism-based explanations.

Submission will be closing on December 31 at 11:59:59 EST. Please limit your abstract to 250 words.

Proceed to abstract submission:http://www.abstractserver.com/sunbelt2013/absmgm/ When submitting your abstract, please select “Mechanisms of Change in Organizational Networks” as session title in the drop down box on the submission site. To be extra sure please put a note in the "additional notes" box on the abstract submission form that states Henning Hillmann as the session organizer.

For further information on the venue an1d conference registration see http://hamburg-sunbelt2013.org

___________________________________________
Henning Hillmann
Professor of Economic and Organizational Sociology
School of Social Sciences
University of Mannheim
D-68131 Mannheim, Germany
Phone: +49.(0)621.181.3942
Fax: +49.(0)621.181.1983

Call for papers for a session on "Large Scale Networks Analysis"

Call for papers for a session on "Large Scale Networks Analysis"
at the 33rd Sunbelt Conference, May 21-26 2013 in Hamburg, Germany

Session organizers:
Jürgen Pfeffer, Carnegie Mellon University Uwe Nagel, University of Konstanz

The ubiquity of electronic communication, e.g., via telephone networks, Facebook or Twitter, induces a growing interest in the analysis of networks derived from such settings. The vast size of the involved data sources and the ease of creating network data from them lead to networks that are of substantially larger scale than "traditionally" considered data sets, i.e. large scale networks.

From the basic questions "how to get the data" (download), "how to handle the data" (network representation), "what to do with it" (research question and method) and "how to perform the corresponding analysis" (algorithms and visualization), this session is interested in methodic aspects of all these questions. In particular, we invite submissions concerned with

- Algorithms widening the applicability of network measures to networks of larger scale.
- New methods of analysis tailored to large scale networks.
- Network visualization with a focus to large scale networks.
- Data-to-network processes for large scale dynamic networks.


Please submit your abstract by December 31 using the following link to the conference's abstract submission system:
http://www.abstractserver.com/sunbelt2013/absmgm/

Please limit your abstract to 250 words. During the submission process, you will be asked to select a session title from a drop-down box; please select "Large Scale Networks Analysis". Please also place a note in the "additional notes" field referring to "Juergen Pfeffer and Uwe Nagel" as the session organizers.

The conference website (http://hamburg-sunbelt2013.org) provides additional information on Hamburg and the 33rd Sunbelt conference.

We look forward to your submissions.

--- Juergen Pfeffer, Assistant Research Professor School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Wean Hall 4218

Sunbelt 2013, Call for Abstracts - Special Note Section - The German-Language Tradition: Approaches to Social Networks

Sunbelt 2013, Hamburg

Call for Abstracts to a Special Note Section:
“The German-Language Tradition: Approaches to Social Networks”

Session of the Section “Sociological Network Research” in the German Sociological Association (GSA)

The current techniques, methods, and theories that make up the body of Social Network Analysis hark back to developments that emanated to a large extent from North America. Its roots, however, can be found to a large part in the German-language tradition of sociology. Georg Simmel is the most prominent figure in this respect. By questioning the status of the individual as the unit of analysis and conceiving sociology as the study of relationships and their diverse forms, Simmel adumbrated many of the cornerstones of today's network research.

But Simmel was not the only one who imagined a way of doing sociology that starts from relations and networks (or forms) of relations. One of the first who thought in relational categories was Karl Marx. Much later Leopold von Wiese erected his whole system of general sociology on the notions of relation and process. Karl Mannheim's studies on the sociology of knowledge discussed the impact of social structure on forms of thinking and knowing. Theodor Litt and Alfred Schütz made fundamental contributions to relational lines of thought with their ideas on the reciprocity of perspectives. Helmuth Plessner, Norbert Elias and of course Niklas Luhmann should be added. Their ideas on relational boundaries, configurations, and patterns of related expectations are certainly part of the German-language tradition of relational sociology.

In addition to these theoretical approaches one should take into account that this tradition also comprises scholars who emigrated to the US, such as Jakob Moreno and Paul Lazarsfeld. Both of them are well-known for their substantial empirical developments. Digging a little bit deeper yet reveals that the empirical roots even date back to the 19th century. For example, in a recently rediscovered article from 1900 matrix algebra is used to trace a German schoolboy’s friends network.

All these works (many others could be added) are very instructive when viewed in the light of modern network research. They broaden the foundations for any current or forthcoming approaches that aim at a theory of social networks and the development of consequent methods. This might trigger a reconsideration of nagging questions and open issues concerning the role of meaning and stories in networks, the multiplexity of ties, the dynamics of networks, the formation of identities, and the setting, crossing, or erasing of boundaries.

In this special note section we would like to concentrate these diverse and dispersed works of the German-language tradition by using networks as a common focus. Many of the named scholars and theories have been discussed extensively in different fields. But they have never been pooled or combined under the rubric of network research so far.

Therefore we invite abstracts for 20 minute oral presentations that address scholars of this tradition and that work out how the pertinent theoretical ideas and notions reset, shift, or reframe critical issues of network research. The discussion of the contributions should revolve around possible combinations and benefits for network theory and analysis.

Submission will be closing on December 31. Abstracts up to a maximum of 250 words should be submitted to the Sunbelt abstract server: http://www.abstractserver.com/sunbelt2013/absmgm/ When submitting your abstract, please select “German-Language Tradition” as session title in the drop down box on the submission site.

Session Organizers:
Christian Stegbauer, Goethe University Frankfurt
Roger Häußling, RWTH Aachen University
Athanasios Karafillidis, RWTH Aachen University (all Germany)