Category: Media

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Interview with Marian-Gabriel Hâncean

“Recognizing the effort of a researcher is a very important matter, and research leads to innovation.” This is the key point made by Marian-Gabriel Hâncean during his interview for MediaUB, the University news outlet. In 2017, Gabriel won the award for The most prestigious article in Social Sciences section, given by the Senate members of University of Bucharest. The interview, in Romanian, can be accessed here.

The award was offered for his article “Homophily in co-authorship networks of East European sociologists“, published in 2016 in Nature-Scientific Reports. Gabriel talked about how important is social recognition for a researcher, pointing out that in social sciences you can gain visibility generally in two ways: by citation in internationally well-documented journals, and by the impact your research results could have on public policy. He stressed out that it is important to keep in mind that, in fact, it is not the researchers who should receive international recognition, but the results of their work.

Gabriel explained the framework for his article, starting with naming the countries upon he performed the analysis and the scientific domain he was referring to. Romania, Poland and Slovenia were three countries from East Europe he analyzed, all chosen by percentage of GDP given for Research, Development and Innovation sector. Sociologists were in his focus. His analysis points out that there are many practices performed by researchers in order to collaborate. For example, it seems that there is a tendency for visible researchers to collaborate with researchers who in turn also have high visibility, a phenomenon called homophily. On the other hand, there is a tendency for less visible authors to try to co-author with significant researchers in order to benefit from the image of the latter. Looking at Romania, Slovenia and Poland, he observed a mix of practices: on the one hand, the social effect of homophily selection was identified and, on the other hand, the Matthew effect (“the rich become richer”).

Gabriel also talked about his two most important ongoing projects: iCoNic (implemented together with GraphNets Research Group) and Orbits (implemented together with Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). GraphNets is an interdisciplinary Research Group made of academics, master students and PhD. candidates, coordinated by Gabriel. GraphNets has a functional formal structure, being affiliated to ICUB (The Research Institute of the University of Bucharest).

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José Luis Molina about migratory corridors between Romania and Spain (interview)

José Luis Molina, professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, gave a talk for Scena9, an online platform that analyzes and promotes the cultural life in Romania. José Molina was asked about the social relationships between Romania and Spain. The link for the interview, in Romanian, can be accessed here.

José Luis talked about ORBITS, his ongoing project, one developed together with a team from University of Bucharest, coordinated by Marian-Gabriel Hâncean. The aim of the project is to study how European citizens seek better opportunities through intra-European mobility, employing a transnational perspective. The project analyzes two important Romanian enclaves established in Spain, having connections with migrant areas of origin. In the first part of the project, the Castellón – Dâmboviţa migratory corridor (the county where most of the Romanians come from the city of Valencia) was documented. The second corridor will analyze the relation between Roquetas de Mar and Bistrița Năsăud.

At this moment (i.e. October 2018), both teams have just finished the first phase of the project- studying the migration corridor Castellon-Dâmboviţa by interviewing 150 people from Castellon and 150 people from Târgoviște, using a link-tracing methodology. At this phase the project aim is to rebuild the huge network of interactions between these two cities, from Facebook communication to money transfer processes. The second phase of the project will start in the begging of 2019.

Nowadays, Castellon is considered to be the new home for many Romanians leaving from Târgoviște. There is a very wide cultural transformation, possible due to the European Union which allows such an extensive mobility. The question which arises is linked to the reason why Romanians chose Spain as their main destination, together with Italy. Professor Molina proposes an answer closely related to legislation. In the 1990s, the legal framework in Spain and Italy allowed a massive process of migration regulations. Thus, the legislation turned them into countries of destination for migrants. Another important reason was that, during that period, both in Spain and Italy, an explosion in the construction sector took place, and that meant a big volume of unskilled workers who could work in both countries.

José Luis pointed out that ORBITS project helped the research team to realize that in Spain (Castellon) the category of people around whom several connections are build is that of the “firstcomers”, the entrepreneurs. They are essential because they have set the conditions for the migration chain to work. These few people who came in the beginning offered support to any Romanian who arrived in the area.

Those enclaves are interesting to study because they are part of an emerging phenomenon: an enormous number of people migrate to a specific place without someone planning that in advance.

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Whole, personal or egocentric networks?

We had the pleasure to listen to Professor José Luis Molina from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, in Timișoara. He gave an inspiring keynote address titled Whole, personal or egocentric networks? What do we know about personal networks and why it matters. The talk about social networks was linked to the concept of liquid society which refers to emergent, changing social structures, which are partially based on agency and personal interactions.

During his talk, professor Molina pointed out that the study of egocentric/personal networks is especially suited for identifying such structures, linking places within and across nations, and networks of organizations or institutions. Egocentric/personal networks informed social network thinking from its inception but just recently the availability of personal network data with both strong and weak ties have contributed to the development of a growing number of contributions in this area.

Nevertheless, in order to fully develop this approach is necessary to distinguish between egocentric (small number of alters), and personal networks (large number of alters). Thus, while egocentric networks are especially useful for social support and health applications, he contended that personal networks are better suited for the study of emergent social structures.

Drawing on more than a decade of research collecting personal networks with a large number of alters, the presentation aims to take stock of the main lessons learned, and reflect upon the theoretical contribution of personal networks to the understanding of social structures and its dynamics.

The talk was held at the West University of Timișoara, Romania, on September, 15.

The presentation delivered at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, Romania, on September, 17, can be seen below.

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ICONIC on air at the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation

Gabriel Hâncean, the principal investigator of the iCoNic project, was invited by Corina Negrea, science journalist, to give an interview on social networks in general, and about iCoNic project in particular, for Radio România Cultural, the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation’s second national channel. Gabriel also talked about the activities that will take place soon both in Timișoara, at the Romanian Sociologist Association Conference Living in a Liquid Society and in Bucharest, at the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work. All of these are part of the iCoNic international workshop Analyzing multiple networks from diverse perspectives, a series of conferences about the influence of social networks.

Firstly, Gabriel talked about what are social networks and how they shape our day-by-day life. People are different, so our social networks. What it counts here is that individuals are their own engineers of their social web (composed by social ties) and that they have the power to control the possibilities and opportunities given by being part of a social network. Studying this type of subjects represents what GraphNets, the research group on graphs and social networks, does in its scientific research activity.

Secondly, he discussed the main objectives of the iCoNic project. The main research objective is to assess the extent to which co-authorship relations (structures) positively impact on the university researchers’ distributions of citations, in a longitudinal framework. He pointed out that in Romanian academic structures, there are few researchers who collaborate to each other and it becomes harder and harder to get funding in order to perform research.

The interview (in Romanian) is online here.