CYGNA: Social network analysis and managing large research teams

Reports on our 17th CYGNA meeting with presentations about social network analysis and managing large research teams

This time, we met in the Hendon Town Hall, our favourite meeting place on the Middlesex campus. We had a mixed group of old-timers and Middlesex colleagues. Special guest was Barbara Myloni (bottom row, right), who was my very first PhD student 20 years ago and is now at the University of Patras in Greece. We had two presentations dealing respectively with social network analysis and managing large research collaborations.

Using SNA in research and as personal network analysis

In this presentation I shared some of my experience with  social network analysis (SNA) as a research and analytic tool, but also showed how SNA could be used as a personal development tool. To illustrate how to use SNA, I collected data from Cygna members and analyzed it, with an eye toward understanding how the network functions currently (see sample below), so that we can strengthen connections between its members in the future.

Herding cats: how to manage large research networks

In this presentation I drew on my experience of leading several large-scale international research projects, where I managed a team of researchers collecting data in 25+ countries. The results of these projects are described in the blogpost Language effects in international mail surveys. Here I focused on the process of managing large teams. As there is no picture of me presenting I am including on of the two lessons learned slides here.

Related blogposts