Call for papers

Historical Network Research

The phenomena studied by the historical sciences are, by their very nature, complex situations: they involve, for example, interwoven personal relationships, collective dynamics that structure social and cultural space, or political and economic systems that operate at local and global levels. The network metaphor is frequently used to describe this entanglement. In recent decades, historians have begun to think about ways of formalizing this approach, appropriating the concepts and tools of graph theory to provide a new perspective on archives. The application of formal network analysis to history is now a fertile field of experimentation and research.

In 2009, following a workshop dedicated to the application of social network analysis to history, a small community of practice, the Historical Network Research community, was created. It evolved into a series of workshops and then an international conference, of which HNR2027 is the 12th to date, following conferences in Hamburg, Ghent, Lisbon, Turku, Brno, Luxembourg, Mainz, Lausanne, Rio de Janeiro, and Turin. 2013 saw the creation of the HNR Collective Bibliography, a central tool for sharing the community’s scientific output. In 2017, the first issue of JHNR, the Journal of Historical Network Research, was published, allowing researchers to share their research in complete Open Access.

For the first time, HNR comes to Mexico. HNR2027 will be hosted in San Luis Potosí and co-organized by the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí (UASLP), through its Instituto de Física, Facultad del Hábitat and Secretaría de Investigación y Posgrado, the Archivo Histórico del Estado de San Luis Potosí (AHESLP), and the Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas (IIMAS-UNAM).

The conference offers an opportunity not only to bring together the international HNR community, but also to strengthen connections among researchers across Latin America who approach historical problems relationally — whether through formal network analysis, prosopography, relational databases, historical GIS, quantitative history, digital history, or other methods concerned with relations among people, institutions, places, texts, objects, and ideas.

2027 Conference Focus: Emergence

The 2027 edition of the conference will focus on Emergence: how historical structures, patterns, and forms of organization arise, transform, persist, and disappear through relations operating across different scales.

Emergence is a foundational concept in complexity and network science, referring to properties and patterns that arise from interactions among multiple components and cannot be understood solely by examining those components in isolation. Historical research has long confronted related questions: markets, communities, institutions, intellectual traditions, and political movements develop through interactions among individuals, groups, material conditions, established institutions, and wider structures of power.

Historical processes, however, cannot simply be reduced to bottom-up emergence. Institutions may be deliberately imposed, hierarchies and inequalities constrain interaction, inherited structures shape later developments, and contingency can redirect historical processes. Network approaches provide ways to investigate these tensions: how local relations become associated with larger structures, how those structures subsequently constrain interaction, and how relational patterns persist or change through time. Historical research, in turn, brings questions of temporality, agency, uncertainty, power, contingency, and incomplete evidence into sharper focus.

For HNR2027, emergence is therefore a question to investigate rather than an explanation to assume.

We particularly welcome contributions that:

  • investigate how historical structures arise, persist, transform, or disappear through relations among people, institutions, places, texts, objects, or ideas;
  • examine the interaction between emergent processes and institutions, hierarchy, coercion, inequality, or political authority;
  • bridge historical network research and complexity science, network science, social network analysis, or related relational approaches;
  • address incomplete, fragmented, biased, or uncertain historical evidence and its implications for identifying network structure;
  • examine the explanatory possibilities and limitations of emergence in historical research;
  • develop network approaches to historical corpora, regions, populations, or traditions underrepresented in the international literature.

HNR2027 particularly encourages participation by researchers working in Latin America and by scholars studying Latin American historical processes, while remaining fully open to contributions concerning any geographical area, historical period, or relevant methodological tradition.

The annual conference focus is a lens, not a filter for selection.

Topics of Study

HNR2027 welcomes contributions discussing any historical period and geographical area. Authors may be historians, linguists, librarians, archaeologists, art historians, computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, social scientists, as well as scholars from other disciplines working with historical data. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Applications of network analysis to history, art history, ancient history, intellectual history, economic history, social history, media history, political history, history of religions, biography, public history, micro-history, postcolonial history, global history, archaeology, literary history, cultural history.
  • Analysis of specific network types, such as geo-spatial networks, temporal and dynamic networks, two-mode (bipartite) networks, multi-layer networks, multiplex networks.
  • Methodological contributions concerning the applicability of network analysis to history, including, for example, modeling, ontologies, linked data, the use of graph metrics, visual network analysis.
  • Pedagogical contributions, presenting teaching scenarios, literacy questions, software or feature presentations, interfaces.

Formats

Long Papers — 20-minute presentation followed by 10 minutes of discussion, intended to present comprehensive research. A 300-word abstract is required (not including bibliography), including at least 3 citations. It should describe the paper’s subject and research questions, an overview of the data used and methods employed, a discussion of results and their wider implications for network analysis in history.

Short Papers — 10-minute presentation followed by 5 minutes of discussion, intended to present research in progress. A 300-word abstract is required (not including bibliography), including at least 3 citations.

Posters — Posters are intended as a space for exploration, exchange, and conversation rather than as abbreviated papers.

They may present:

  • historical sources, archival collections, or datasets with potential for relational analysis;
  • exploratory network representations or visualizations;
  • methodological or conceptual problems for which discussion with the HNR community would be useful;
  • digital tools, databases, interfaces, or workflows;
  • historical questions for which a researcher is considering the potential contribution of network approaches;
  • emerging projects seeking methodological feedback, comparative perspectives, or possible collaborations.

Researchers do not need to have completed a formal network analysis in order to submit a poster. We particularly welcome posters from scholars who are beginning to explore how relational or network approaches might contribute to an existing historical research problem.

A short abstract of up to 200 words should explain the historical problem or material being presented, its potential connection to network research, and the kind of discussion, feedback, or collaboration the author hopes to pursue during the poster session.

Submission Guidelines

  • Abstracts must be submitted via the conference management platform: hnr2027.sciencesconf.org.
  • Abstracts must be written in English.
  • Citations must use the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition, Author-Date style.
  • Including an image, figure, or network visualization in the abstract is encouraged where relevant.
  • Accepted abstracts and accompanying images will be published on the HNR2027 conference website prior to the conference and subsequently included in the HNR2027 Book of Abstracts.
  • Authors are aware that at least one presenter must be on-site in San Luis Potosí to present accepted papers.

Important Dates

DateMilestone
December 11th, 2026Deadline for submissions
February 3rd, 2027Notification of acceptance/rejection
March 3rd, 2027Registration opening
July 14th–16th, 2027Conference — UASLP Central Campus, San Luis Potosí, Mexico
Submit your abstract

Plaza de Armas, San Luis Potosí