In his canonical book, Linked, Albert-László Barabási explored the history and prevalence of networks in the world, and how studying them opens new avenues of understanding, predicting that “network thinking is poised to invade all domains of human activity and most fields of human inquiry… aimed at approaching our interlocked universe.” Often influenced by methodologies from the social sciences, this ‘network thinking’ and an interest in the use of digital and computational tools within the humanities continues to flourish. More recently, this has fostered a growing demand to expand on how such interdisciplinary approaches can provide fresh insights into historical narratives.

Funded by the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM), ‘Our Interlocked Universe’ will be an interdisciplinary conference exploring the methods and applications of social network analysis (SNA) within historical contexts, offering a space to engage with compelling demonstrations – both quantitative and qualitative – of historical SNA in practice but also methodological discussions around the specific uses and limitations associated with using SNA in historical research.

We invite abstracts of 300 words for 20-minute papers, including a working title and brief presenter biography. Papers should focus on social network analysis within any historical context(s), applying quantitative and qualitative methods or approaches. These may include but are not limited to:

- working with network data;

- network centrality;

- community detection;

- network evolution;

- network data visualisation;

- modelling/simulating networks;

- and combining network analysis with other methodologies (such as GIS or linguistics).

Abstracts should include details of the methods applied, the historical period studied (all periods and geographical regions will be considered), and the source or data type used. We welcome abstracts from researchers of all career levels and pathways and will be awarding a best paper prize for ECR/PhD speakers. Please direct submission materials or any queries to Dr. Grace Di Méo and Dr. Caitlin Burge at interlocked.universe@gmail.com.