Jeroen Bakker, researcher at Data School, and Jelte van Boheemen, research software engineer at the Research Sofware Lab of the Centre for Digital Humanities will introduce you to the core concepts of network analysis in this interactive workshop. Following this introduction, you’ll go hands-on with open-source network visualization sofware Gephi and the Python package NetworkX to study a large-scale social media conversation. After this hands-on session, you will be able to independently conduct a network research on a large dataset.

Networks are all around us. The relationship between friends on Facebook, money flows between businesses, or characters in a novel: they can all be studied as parts of a network. These types of analyses can open up a wealth of new perspectives, granting insights into the dynamics of social and cultural phenomena that could not be discovered through traditional methods.

Getting started with network analysis can be daunting, however. This course for humanities staff aims to take away the initial hurdles of data collection, preparation and visualization by offering an accessible entry into the world of networks. In this interactive workshop you will be introduced to the core concepts of network analysis, after which you will go hands-on with open-source network visualization software Gephi to study a large-scale social media conversation. You will learn how to detect communities, find important actors within the debate and filter for relevant data.

The workshop continues by exploring networks in Python using the package NetworkX. Topics include creating and manipulating graphs, importing and exporting from Gephi, and network analysis.

Level

No previous programming experience is required, materials are provided for both beginners and advanced users. This workshop will be in English.

Preparation

Participants should bring their own laptops.

For whom?

Due to our funding, priority will be given to teachers, researchers and students of the Faculty of Humanities at Utrecht University for this workshop. If you are affiliated with a different faculty or institution but interested in participating, please register to be placed on a waiting list. Notification of available spaces will be sent two weeks before the workshop.

Registration

Please complete the registration form below if you wish to sign up for this workshop. Register early to secure your place, as spots are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

If you find yourself unable to attend after completing registration, we kindly request that you cancel your registration by sending an email to cdh@uu.nl, allowing us to offer the spot to another participant. Thank you for your cooperation.