Eelke Heemskerk has been appointed Professor of Political Networks at the University of Amsterdam's Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. 'This chair fosters broad collaboration to gain a deeper understanding of how political networks can contribute to a better society.'
Power and influence from a network perspective
'My chair examines how relationships of power and status in our society affect the socio-economic behaviour of people and organisations,' Heemskerk explains. 'Examples include the relationship between shareholders and employees in a company, but also how poverty and wealth can be reinforced by relationships in your social network.'
Power is by definition relational, according to Heemskerk. With his chair, he will therefore study power and influence from a network perspective. 'To this end, I will use new methods and techniques to analyse very large data sets, such as social networks of the entire population of a country, or networks of power relations in the global business community.'
The University of Amsterdam has a strong tradition of studying networks of power and influence that dates back more than 50 years. 'With this chair, I will continue, bolster and expand this area of research. The expansion will primarily involve the introduction of interdisciplinary large-scale network analysis. This way, the chair will also contribute to building the new field of computational social science,' Heemskerk says.
Working on solutions to complex problems
'Our society faces some huge challenges, such as economic inequality, segregation, climate change and trust in politics,' Heemskerk says of the social urgency of this chair. 'Particularly with these kinds of complex issues, it is not enough to study isolated individuals or organisations and their preferences. To encourage the business community to move towards global sustainability, we need to understand how companies organise themselves as a network around the world. And if you want to understand why someone might become sympathetic to political violence, you also have to consider the social relationships that shape that person.'
This chair will enable Heemskerk to continue working on this on an ongoing and interdisciplinary basis. 'What patterns in social networks contribute to a fairer and more equal society? And what patterns hinder this?' He will also collaborate with organisations outside the university that want to contribute to solutions to these complex problems. 'They can provide large data sets that we at the university can analyse and which may offer insight into how networks play an important but not immediately visible role.'
Working together with other disciplines
Asked what Heemskerk is particularly looking forward to, he replies enthusiastically, 'I'm looking forward to lots of things! As a scientist, I have always been fascinated by the fact that social relationships are incredibly important to our society, but at the same time we know relatively little about them. I am also greatly looking forward to the possibilities, and I would even say the necessity, of working with other disciplines such as computer science, sociology, history and physics, to understand how power and influence are shaped by networks and affect society. And finally, I look forward to developing education within the fields of both political science and computational social science.'
About Eelke Heemskerk
Before his appointment as professor, Eelke Heemskerk worked as an associate professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam. He also leads the ERC-funded CORPNET research group and is co-director of POPNET (digital research infrastructure for population-scale social network analysis) and director of the first Bachelor's programme in computational social science in the Netherlands. He has published research on corporate governance, corporate elites, social networks and institutional reform in the Netherlands and Europe. In his current research, he focuses primarily on big data related to networks of corporate ownership and control, and how social networks influence decision-making and corporate governance.
