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  Barry Wellman
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   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC               NetLab Director
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   University of Toronto   Toronto Canada M5S 2J4   twitter:barrywellman
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2010 17:04:35 +0100
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Subject: [bms-rc33] Call - PhD Positions with ICS (Groningen, Netherlands)

Thanks to Christian Steglich

Deadline: 15 January  2011


Dear colleagues,

As part of its annual recruitment and selection procedure for
PhD-students, the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and
Methodology (ICS) in the Netherlands is looking for excellent candidates
for a couple of four-year-long PhD projects on several network-related
topics. In particular, we are looking for candidates interested in the
following projects in statistical network analysis:

     Project "Statistical Models for Three-Way Network Data"
     Examples of three-way social processes are gossip (where two people
     choose a third person, an ´object´ to talk about), informal
     mediation (where a colleague might entrust a problem with another
     colleague to a third colleague, who acts as mediator to solve the
     problem), or social cognitive maps (where actors in a dyadic network
     report their perceptions of the whole network). While in dyadic
     network data actors have two roles, as 'sender' and 'receiver', in
     triadic observations they have a third role, for instance as
     'object' (of gossip), as 'mediator' (of problems with colleagues),
     or as 'observer' (of dyadic relations). While older work
     (Krackhardt, 1987) focused on how to summarize triadic data to
     obtain a dyadic network, such data reduction implies a potentially
     severe loss of information. So far, not much work has been done to
     develop statistical models for three-way data (see Bond & Kenny,
     2002, for an exception). This project focuses on the development of
     appropriate statistical models to handle the richness of this type
     of data.

     Project "Validity of Models for Network Structure and Social
     Influence Processes"
     In the past decade, the analysis of social networks with statistical
     models has developed rapidly with the availability of new estimation
     methods, using advanced computational techniques, coupled with new
     insights in the complex structure of social network data. On the one
     hand, these are models explaining the shape of networks as such,
     i.e., the interdependencies between the network actors. On the other
     hand, there are models using networks to explain other phenomena,
     such as (change in) status, performance, or peer influence. Many new
     methods and models have been proposed, one of them being stochastic
     actor-based modeling ("SIENA"), proposed by the project initiators.
     However, there are hardly any studies comparing the different
     approaches.As a consequence, the demarcation of the conclusions that
     can reliably be drawn with the available methods remains an open
     question and guidelines for the selection of appropriate analytical
     methods are lacking. This project aims to fill these gaps.

The two projects will be supervised by Christian Steglich, Marijtje van
Duijn, Mark Huisman, and Tom Snijders. The recruitment and selection
procedure for our scholarships started December 11, 2010. Applications,
online only, should be delivered through the ICS website before January
15, 2011. The interviews will be conducted on March 3, 4, 8 and 9, 2011.

More details, also about the other available positions, can be found via
the website http://www.ics-graduateschool.nl/vacancies/

We very much appreciate your interest and cooperation,
Christian Steglich, Marijtje van Duijn, Mark Huisman, Tom Snijders
on behalf of Rafael Wittek,
Scientific Director ICS

Christian Steglich, researcher
Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences
University of Groningen
Grote Rozenstraat 31
9712 TG Groningen
The Netherlands

fon +31-(0)50-363 6189
fax +31-(0)50-363 6226

http://www.gmw.rug.nl/~steglich/

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