Social Network Analysis at NC State
Spring 2026 Speaker Series
Néha Gondal, “Rulenet: Mapping Relationships between Cultural and other Variables using Association-Rules and Network Graphs”
- Associate Professor, Department of Sociology & Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, Boston University
- February 6, 2026, 3-4:30p in room 129 of the 1911 building
- Sociologists have persuasively argued that cultural meaning can be interpreted by analyzing the systems of relations that measure the so-called ‘going together’ of cultural materials. Research investigating cultural tastes and preferences has used this approach to interpret consumption patterns as relational systems using a variety of techniques including multidimensional scaling, two-mode network analysis, and variable correlation networks. I contribute to this growing set of tools by describing and demonstrating the use of a datamining technique with scant history of use within sociology, called ‘association-rules.’ The key contribution of this technique is that it generates directed relationships between variables (e.g., preference for opera –> preference for ballet), which has several advantages over existing techniques that conceptualize relationality in terms of mutual presence. I show how such ‘one-sided’ clustering (A goes with B, but B may not go together with A) can be represented and analyzed as network graphs, an approach I call ‘Rulenet.’ In this talk, I will discuss how the proposed technique can provide novel insights into the organizations of tastes and outline extensions of the approach to other sociologically relevant domains.
Dustin S. Stoltz, “Embeddings as a Generic Method”
- Assistant Professor, Sociology and Cognitive Science, Lehigh University
- February 13, 2026, 3-4:30p in room 129 of the 1911 building
- Word or text embeddings are a central component in modern language models, including those powering generative AI. Embeddings represent some token (typically a word or phrase) as positions in space, where tokens that are closer together are used in similar contexts or evoke similar concepts – even if those tokens never actually co-occur. Thus, embeddings operationalize “meaning” as fundamentally relational. We can use these embeddings for various downstreams tasks or we can navigate this latent “meaning space” created by embeddings directly using basic arithmetic. In doing so, we can explore how meaning changes overtime or how meaning differs between different collections of texts. We may also generalize “token” beyond words or phrases strictly, and include many collections of co-occuring entities.
Previous Events
- Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University
- November 20, 2025
Peter Ore, “Toward a Social Metrology: Reconciling Quantitative and Interpretive Approaches in the Study of Data”
- Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Queens College in the CUNY
- April 14, 2025
Tom R. Leppard, “Givers, Takers, and Reciprocators: Reimagining Individuals and Groups in UK Grime Music”
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Data Science & AI Academy, North Carolina State University
- April 4, 2025
Joe Quinn, “Foraging on Graphs: Adding Agency to Models of Contagion in Networks”
- Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina
- March 28, 2025
Christine Mair, “Successfully” Aging “Alone?”: Unequal Global Opportunities and Rising Risks in Family-Based Models of Care Cross-Nationally”
- Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
- March 21, 2025
- Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
- December 4, 2024, 2:30-4p, room 129 in the 1911 building
A Brief Introduction to Social Network Analysis and Its Applications
- Tom Leppard and Adam Goldfarb, two-part workshop
- Oct 25 & Nov 1, 2024
Scott Duxbury, “A General Framework for Micro Macro Analysis in Social Networks”
- Associate Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- April 19, 2024
Craig Rawlings, “Ideology and Influence: Sociocognitive Foundations of Belief Change”
- Associate Professor of Sociology, Duke University
- April 12, 2024
Omar Lizardo, “Coasting on Duality: Generalized Similarities, Positional Analysis, and the Correspondence Analysis of Two-Mode Networks”
- LeRoy Neiman Term Chair Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
- March 29, 2024
Diane Felmlee, “Who Takes the Risks? A Network Analysis of Online Dating”
- Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography, Pennsylvania State University
- February 16, 2024
Christina Prell, “Which Networks Matter, and at Which Scale? Considering How Social Networks Drive Climate Change and Shape Adaptations”
- Professor in Public Policy and Public Affairs, University of Groningen
- April 24, 2023
Ronald Breiger, “Regression Modeling as a Special Case of Network Analysis”
- Regents’ Professor of Sociology, University of Arizona
- April 7, 2023
Kathleen Carley, “The Power of High Dimensional Networks”
- Professor in the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
- February 24, 2023
Emily Erikson, “Network Structure, Specialization, and the Division of Labor”
- Professor of Sociology, Yale University
- February 3, 2023
James Moody, “Advances in Social Network Visualization”
- Robert O. Keohane Professor of Sociology, Duke University
- January 20, 2023
Zachary Brown, “Biblio-NET-rics: Social Network Analysis of Co-Authorship Data”
- Associate Professor of Agriculture and Resource Economics, North Carolina State University
- November 29, 2022