Population-scale social network analysis

Population-scale social network analysis

Over the past 5 years, population-scale social network analysis has advanced research aimed at understanding the structure and dynamics of large-scale social systems. These developments have been driven primarily by the increasing availability of linkable administrative microdata derived from official government registers covering the complete population of a nation, including civil population registries, household and family register, employer-employee data, education records, and longitudinal residential histories.

 

With this novel type of social network data now available in various countries, including the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Austria, it has become possible to revisit longstanding questions across disciplines at an unprecedented scale. Recent works in the social sciences cover the analysis of life-course trajectories, nation-scale measurement of social segregation, the role of network structure in shaping opportunities for upward mobility, and the influence of social networks on opinion formation. At the same time, register-based population networks have opened new avenues for addressing fundamental problems in network analysis, such as community detection, diffusion processes, and  disease spread.

In this organized session, we invite presentations that consider social networks at the level of an entire population, broadly construed, and that advance theory, methods, or empirical understanding of large-scale social systems using population-wide data. We welcome contributions from all disciplines, including but not limited to sociology, economics, demography, computer science, network science, political science, epidemiology, and computational social science. Submissions may focus on substantive applications (e.g., inequality, mobility, segregation, diffusion, health, or opinion dynamics), methodological innovations (e.g., network construction, inference, measurement, privacy-preserving analysis, or scalability), or conceptual and ethical challenges raised by population-scale network data. 

 

Relevant topics and keywords

• Population-scale social networks

• Nation-scale social networks

• Register-based social networks

• Causal inference with population data

• Comparative population-scale network analysis

• Complex kinship networks

• Diffusion, contagion, and spreading processes

• Economic mobility

• Ethics, governance, and responsible use of population-scale networks

• Institutional and organizational network structures

• Methodological challenges in large-scale network analysis 

• Life-course and longitudinal network dynamics

• Measurement, bias, and validation in register-based networks

• Multilayer and multiplex population networks

• Network backbones

• Opinion dynamics

• Privacy and anonymity in networks

• Segregation

• Social capital

• Social networks and inequality

• Social networks created from microdata

• Spatial and residential network processes

 

Contribution and submission

In line with the EUSN conference requirements, abstracts are limited to 500 words, not including the title, authors, and keywords. Presentations will be allocated 15 minutes plus 7 minutes for discussion. Submission details can be found on the EUSN conference website: https://liu.se/en/Event/eusn-2026

 

Session organizers

• Eszter Bokányi (Leiden University)

• Eelke Heemskerk (University of Amsterdam)

• Yuliia Kazmina (University of Amsterdam)

• Frank Takes (Leiden University)

 

Contact

Do you have questions about this session or the fit of your work? Please feel very welcome to reach out to Frank Takes, f.w.takes@liacs.leidenuniv.nl.