Program

The program of the Historical Network Research Conference 2025 includes 20 papers, two keynotes and two tutorials.

Keynotes

Making shell companies visible. Digital history as a tool to unveil global networks and local infrastructures

Benoît Majerus works as a historian at the Center for Contemporary and Digital History. In the last three years, he has research on a project at the intersection of Digital and Financial History. In LETTERBOX, he used digital methods to reveal how Luxembourgish shell companies have been incorporated since the interwar period in global tax avoidance schemes.

Tutorials

From Snapshots to Mechanisms: An Introduction to Social Network Analysis for Historians

This introductory workshop explores the fundamentals of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for historians, moving from static descriptions of social structures to the mechanisms that shape networks over time. We will cover key concepts such as triads, embeddedness, cohesion, and centrality, as well as more complex phenomena like structural holes, homophily, and multiplexity. Additionally, we will discuss the physics of networks, including small-world properties and assortativity, and introduce models of tie formation and network dynamics. By the end of the workshop, participants will gain tools to analyze historical networks not just as fixed snapshots, but as evolving systems shaped by social and spatial forces.

Charles Kirschbaum holds a MBA at Wharton and a PhD in Business Administration from FGV. He is an Associate Professor at Insper. Earlier, he worked in consulting and private equity. He is the academic coordinator of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Observatory at Insper and the coordinator of the Organizational Studies division of Semead. He is an affiliated researcher at the Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância (NCPI). His research interests include Creative Industries, Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Social Network Analysis.

Accepted papers

This is a preliminary list of accepted papers. This section will be updated with the full program soon.

  • A Data Visualization Platform for Analyzing Social Relations in 19th-century Alegrete
    Paulo Roberto Scheuer Gomes, Laura Vargas Dicheti, Carla Maria Dal Sasso Freitas

  • Analyzing political-religious criminality during the Dollfuß-/Schuschnigg-Regime – A case study of LLM-assisted historical network research
    Cindarella Petz

  • Breaking the Surface. Uncovering Mechanisms, Practices and Dynamics of Historical Engagement in the City of Cologne
    Annika Häberlein

  • Cliental Network of Biała Podlaska 1702-1709: An Attempt at Qualitative Analysis of Patronage Networking
    Jan Siwoń

  • Exploring the Nature of Science through Data and Connections: Introducing Historical Network Analysis in Brazilian High School Physics Education
    Marlon C. Alcantara, Leonardo Domingos

  • High Middle Ages Aristocratic Networks through Alcuin’s Letters and Digital Methods (c. 790-804)
    Renato Da Silva

  • Historical Network Research of International Trade: Data Issues Overview
    Alina Vladimirova

  • Identifying prominent actors in historical networks: The case of the New Education Movement
    Lauri Luoto

  • Imputing relational data based on individual strategies and network structure: experiment with records from Peter Zwicker’s inquisitorial campaign in Stettin in 1393-94
    Kaarel Sikk, Välimäki Reima, David Zbíral

  • Institutional Development and the Dynamics of Power Through Time
    Héctor Gutiérrez Magaña, Jesús Espinal-Enríquez

  • Introducing High School Students to Historical Network Research: A Pedagogical Framework
    Juliane T. Moraes, Marlon C. Alcantara, Hudson W. Ferreira

  • Mapping Medieval Mazovia’s Trade Networks: Reconstructing Economic and Social Dynamics through Data Analysis
    Karol Banach

  • Network information extraction from medieval trial records combining LLM-based coreference resolution with string matching in pre-existing lists of persons
    David Zbíral, Gideon Kotzé, Zoltán Brys, Robert L. J. Shaw, Tomáš Hampejs, Andres Karjus

  • Networks of Named Entities in Large Press Collections: Epistemological and Methodological Challenges
    Martin Grandjean

  • Political entanglements. A network study on contracts, power, and defection in Renaissance Italy’s warfare market
    Criveller Margherita, Federico Bianchi, Raffaele Vacca, Flaminio Squazzoni

  • Social Networks from Dailies: The Observer’s Perspective José Antonio Motilla, Diego Espitia, Edgardo Galán Vasquez, Edgardo Ugalde, Martín Zumay

  • The Pioneers Network of the Computer Science Courses in Brazil
    Ana Bazzan

  • The Potential of LLM Models in the Research of Arabic Script Biographical Texts
    Tuba Nur Saraçoğlu

  • The roots of business familism in Southern Italy. A quantitative analysis of the 19th century
    Roberto Rondinelli, Maria Carmela Schisani, Giancarlo Ragozini

  • The Succession of Mysticism during the Formative Period of Islamic Reformism
    Yuri Ishida