Three-Toed Sloth

"Networks in Political Science" Conference

Via James Fowler in e-mail:

Call for Papers: Conference at Harvard on Networks in Political Science

The study of networks has exploded over the last decade, both in the social and hard sciences. From sociology to biology, there has been a paradigm shift from a focus on the units of the system to the relationships among those units. Despite a tradition incorporating network ideas dating back at least 70 years, political science has been largely left out of this recent creative surge. This has begun to change, as witnessed, for example, by an exponential increase in network-related research presented at the major disciplinary conferences.

We therefore announce an open call for paper proposals for presentation at a conference on "Networks in Political Science" (NIPS), aimed at all of the subdisciplines of political science. NIPS is supported by the National Science Foundation, and sponsored by the Program on Networked Governance at Harvard University.

The conference will take place June 13--14. Preceding the conference will be a series of workshops introducing existing substantive areas of research, statistical methods (and software packages) for dealing with the distinctive dependencies of network data, and network visualization. There will be a \$50 conference fee. Limited funding will be available to defray the costs of attendance for doctoral students and recent (post 2005) PhDs. Funding may be available for graduate students not presenting papers, but preference will be given to students using network analysis in their dissertations. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply.

The deadline for submitting a paper proposal is March 1, 2008. Proposals should include a title and a one-paragraph abstract. Graduate students and recent Ph.D.'s applying for funding should also include their CV, a letter of support from their advisor, and a brief statement about their intended use of network analysis. Send them to networked_governance [at] ksg [dot] harvard [dot] edu. The final program will be available at www.ksg.harvard.edu/netgov.

Program Committee: Christopher Ansell (UCBerkeley), James Fowler (UCSD), Michael Heaney (Florida), David Lazer (Harvard), Scott McClurg (Southern Illinois), John Padgett (Chicago), John Scholz (Florida State), Sarah Reckhow (UCBerkeley), Paul Thurner (Mannheim), and Michael Ward (University of Washington).

Had I been consulted, I might have suggested not chosing the same acronym as one of the premier conferences in machine learning, especially not after this, but the mere fact that this didn't occur to anyone suggests that the communities are distinct. In any event, this looks very promising.

Networks; Commit a Social Science