ANR-Lab Anniversary: a series of celebratory scientific events was held

The International Laboratory for Applied Network Research celebrated its 10th anniversary. In honor of this, a number of events were organized.

Photo by Maria Ermolaeva

ANR-Lab team took part in the Readings on instrumental methods in economic and social research in memory of Evgeniy Grigorievich Yasin.

As part of the Readings on May 16-18, the International Laboratory for Applied Network Research organized several events dedicated to research in the field of theory and practice of network analysis, current challenges and opportunities for its application in the Russian-language research space.

On May 16-17, the Academic Session “Network Analysis” was held with presentations by invited speakers and laboratory staff in three areas:

Network Analysis Methods
Network Analysis: Practice and Application
Network Analysis: Social Theories and Processes

Read more about how the Academic session went

On May 17, a Round table “Theory and practice of network analysis in the Russian-language research space: experience, prospects and challenges” was held, where both the current state of the direction of Social network analysis (SNA) and the prospects for its development in the Russian research space were discussed. In the first part of the event, plenary reports by the leaders of the Laboratory were presented, and in the second part, round table participants discussed current issues in the development of the area.

More about the Round Table

The round table was dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the International Laboratory for Applied Network Analysis, which was opened in 2014. The round table on May 17 featured representatives of research groups using network analysis in fundamental and applied research in the Russian-speaking research space, as well as industry representatives using network analysis methodology to solve practical research problems.

In the first part of the event, plenary reports by the leaders of the Laboratory were presented.

Welcoming speech from the scientific directors of the laboratory – emeritus professors of the University of Ljubljana Anuška Ferligoj and Vladimir Batagelj "How to build your own scientific school in the field of network analysis"
The report by Anuška Ferligoj and Vladimir Batagelj was devoted to the development of network analysis in Slovenia and cooperation with Russian researchers in this area. Vladimir and Anuška began to engage in network analysis professionally in the mid-70s of the 20th century.

“In addition to active work at our native University of Ljubljana, from the very beginning we tried to establish international scientific cooperation – in particular, Vladimir and I worked together with Patrick Doreian at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2014 we took part in the first European conference dedicated to SNA. It is interesting that already in 2023, it was our University of Ljubljana that had the honor of hosting this conference.

At our home university of Ljubljana, we were also actively involved in the development of network analysis. Together with Vladimir, we founded an interdisciplinary doctoral program in Statistics and a master's program in Applied Statistics. Previously, we actively encouraged PhD students to write papers in this area. Later, one of the students (Mrvar) even received an academic award for his work on Pajek (network visualization software).

Active cooperation with Russia began in 2014. Then in September, we were invited by ANR-lab and gave a presentation on Pajek at the Higher School of Economics. And later, Daria Maltseva paid a return visit to the University of Ljubljana. Vladimir also taught courses “Intelligence Data Analysis” and “Introduction to Network Analysis” in Voronovo.”
Speech by Valentina Viktorovna Kuskova “10 years of work of the Laboratory of Applied Network Analysis at the National Research University Higher School of Economics”
Valentina Kuskova presented a detailed history of the laboratory. The laboratory was founded in 2014, and until 2017 it was rather a scientific club. At first, the laboratory was engaged in the application of network analysis in the fields of education, sociology and management. In 2017, the second phase of the laboratory’s development began: institutionalization. The areas of scientific interests were also expanded – studying the application of SNA in political science and business. Starting from the third phase of its development (2020 – 2022), the laboratory began to analyze the dynamics of networks in a time perspective using models such as SAOM, TERGM and AMEN.
Speech by the head of the laboratory, Daria Vasilievna Maltseva, “What do the results of bibliometric analysis say about the field of network analysis.”
Bibliometric analysis involves the use of mathematical statistics to study publications. Daria Vasilyevna told how, using network analysis in bibliometrics, you can create networks of authors and co-authors and build citation structures. The texts themselves can also be turned into networks, for example using n-grams. In this case, the sentences in the text are divided into n words, the sequences of which are lemmatized (reduced to the initial form) and turned into networks.

The video recording of the first part of the Round table is available here.

In the second part, the Round table participants discussed current issues in the development of network analysis. Based on their experience, the invited round table participants told in which disciplinary areas and to study which topics the SNA methodology is used, what current theoretical and methodological issues are now facing researchers, what challenges network analysts face, and how they see the opportunities and prospects for using network analysis methodology in the Russian-language research space.

Fuad Tagievich Aleskerov spoke about the formation of his scientific group, spoke about the publication of a book in 2022 about centrality in networks and about the upcoming publication of a book on bibliometric analysis. At the end of his report, Fuad Tagiyevich suggested “became friends.”

Then Andrey Andreyevich Parinov from the International Laboratory of Intelligent Systems and Structural Analysis (headed by Sergey Olegovich Kuznetsov) spoke. Andrey Andreevich noted the most current research topics in the field of machine learning methods and data analysis: combating the spread of fake news, identifying opinion leaders and new approaches to identifying agency.

The presentation by Ilya Aleksandrovich Pomiguev from the Department of Policy and Management of the Federal Tax Service of the National Research University Higher School of Economics was devoted to highlighting discursive features in the speeches of politicians and studying legislative activity using a network approach. Artem Mikhailovich Maltsev continued this topic by talking about inferential network analysis, which statistically explains the probability of connections between the vertices of different graphs.

Ivan Aleksandrovich Klimov noted in his speech the need of business for the availability of model research in network science.

Svetlana Sergeevna Bodrunova spoke about the Center for International Media Studies at St. Petersburg State University, noting that the processes of forming public opinion are studied from different angles, in interdisciplinary dialogue.

Galina Vitalievna Gradoselskaya spoke about current problems in the development of network analysis. Currently, the most advanced software for SNA makes it very easy and quick to learn the basics in this area. As a result, any researcher can “become” a network analyst overnight. At the same time, Gradoselskaya noted that a good data analyst needs to have deep knowledge in the areas of mathematical statistics, probability theory, databases, etc.

Ilya Andreevich Karpov spoke about the use of network analysis in industry. In particular, SNA will be used in the field of NLP (natural language processing). To turn text into a network, analysts transform text (by performing lemmatization) into an entity structure. Next, such a structure is transformed into a graph. In the future, the graph greatly helps to create a basic idea of the text, its tonal and semantic content.Another application of SNA is the creation of recommender systems. However, Karpov noted that all these solutions are very expert and tailored to individual cases.

Stanislav Pavlovich Moiseev continued the topic. Despite the enormous potential applications of SNA, networks are still primarily used as a visualization tool. While the main focus is on neural networks and deep learning. However, Stanislav emphasized that there are many both product and non-commercial projects where SNA is the best solution.

The Round table continued with discussion, and at the end its participants summed up the results and formulated the current agenda in the field of SNA.

On May 18, a one-day intensive course on network analysis “One-day network-diving” took place. The intensive was aimed at young researchers who want to get acquainted with the methodology of social network analysis. The intensive participants were able to learn about why social network analysis is the “icing on the cake” among data analytics, understood the basic terms and concepts of this area, gained an understanding of the available programs for network analysis and their main capabilities, and also learned how to work in the program Gephi as part of a practical lesson.

More about the intensive

The intensive began with a speech by the academic director of the educational programme “Data Analytics and Social Statistics” Ivan Klimov. He spoke about the programme, its advantages and the disciplines that await students. The programme is focused on computational social sciences and includes three key areas: Data Science & Computer Science Tools, Statistical Data Analysis & Modeling and Social Science Methodology.

“We see that the market has a more complex request for data scientists. It is required not only to correctly implement data analysis algorithms, but also to clearly address the meaningful request for data analysis, and be ready to answer the question “What does this mean?”” Klimov noted. This year the programme places special emphasis on the logic and methodology of the social sciences.

Photo by Maria Ermolaeva

Ivan Aleksandrovich emphasized a very important point: “It is important for us that during your studies in the programme you become the best version of yourself. All teachers in the program work for this purpose and provide unique competencies.”

The master's programme provides the opportunity to develop in several career areas: business analytics, HR analytics, research consulting and academic research. You can choose one of two educational tracks of the programme: Computational Social and Network Science and Applied Statistics and Data Science. Deputy Head of ANR-Lab Irina Pavlova spoke in more detail about the content of these tracks, as well as their practical and organizational aspects.

Photo by Maria Ermolaeva

The head of the laboratory, Daria Maltseva, continued the meeting with the report “SNA as an Icing-on-the-Cake Methodology in Data Analytics”. She described how connections between collaborators, scientists, keywords in texts, or characters in literary works are studied within the framework of Network Science. Social network analysis is an autonomous independent theoretical and methodological direction in which priority is given to the forms (structures) of relationships presented in the form of networks.

We talked about how digital technologies allow us to reach new levels of analysis of social systems, making it possible to study complex networks in dynamics and model them using advanced algorithms in Network Science. It was also noted that the spread of new digital technologies, the penetration of the Internet and social networks into the lives of many people contributes to the formation of so-called “digital traces”. Researchers are obtaining more and more information about the actions and interactions in various social groups, teams and society. Such “digital traces” become “big data” that can be stored and processed thanks to the development of computers and computing power, as well as the creation of advanced and fast algorithms and data analysis tools. “Human society, the traditional object of study of the social sciences, can be viewed from a new, previously inaccessible point of view.”

Photo by Maria Ermolaeva

Recording of speeches by Ivan Klimov, Irina Pavlova and Daria Maltseva.
In the second part of the intensive, Anna Semenova, junior researcher at ANR-Lab, presented her report on the topic “All We Need is Nets. Nets are All We Need.” Participants were introduced to basic network analysis terms and concepts, network density and node centrality, and other basic metrics for describing social networks.
The end of the event was dedicated to the practical lesson “Simple but Fantastic: Network Visualizations in Gephi” from ANR-Lab junior researcher Tamara Shcheglova. Participants gained an understanding of available network analysis programs and their main capabilities, and also practiced visualizing networks using Gephi.