Sunbelt XXXIV - Florida, St.Pete Beach

This year, the Sunbelt XXXIV conference took place in Florida. From SELS, Vera Titkova, Daniel Alexandrov and Valeria Ivaniushina were in attendance.

In our lab, many researchers are involved in the study and analysis of social networks of adolescents, and for this reason the International Conference on Social Network Analysis- Sunbelt XXXIV- is one of the most important and interesting conferences for us. Members of the SELS staff have been participating in the Sunbelt conferences time since 2010, this being their fifth time.

This year, our Laboratory presented three reports. All of them were based on the data collected in the Russian high schools and vocational schools but all of them were focused on different topics and using different methods. Vera Titkova presented the results of a longitudinal analysis of the consumption of alcoholic drinks in three vocational schools of the city; Daniel Alexandrov gave a talk on the networks providing assistance in academic studies for students of the Moscow region; and Valeria Ivaniushina presented a study on the impact of anti-school culture, which exists on different levels of the school social structure, and on the academic performance of students.

It’s interesting to note that all three of our presentations were attended by Tom Snijders and Christian Steglich, the creators of an actor-oriented model called SIENA, designed to detect the effects of selection and influence in network data. They took the time to listen to our presentations, asked questions, and gave their recommendations concerning further data analysis. It is good to know that the work of our laboratory is becoming of interest to the giants of network science.

This year's conference took place in Florida, and although we didn’t have an opportunity to take a swim in the ocean, we enjoyed the sunshine and lush vegetation.