COALESCE LAB

I am proud to announce the COALESCE Lab, a research group dedicated to studying processes of social exclusion, cohesion, and polarization from a social network perspective. While these processes are fundamentally relational, they are often studied on an individual level, or on the basis of social media networks, which leads us to knowledge gaps regarding their emergence and persistence. The COALESCE Lab aims to contribute to research into these processes by focusing in depth on the everyday relationships among citizens and their societal consequences. It thus aims to connect micro-level relationships to macro-level outcomes.

To do so, the COALESCE Lab conducts mixed-methods research: it has a strong core of computational analysis on network patterns, but also adds qualitative analysis on the meaning of these patterns for individuals and the causal mechanisms underlying their emergence, and agent-based modeling and simulation to study possible macro-level outcomes in more depth. The lab, directed by me, is embedded in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, although it is an interdisciplinary environment, where we combine our complementary strengths to advance knowledge in these areas. The lab is also embedded within the larger GRAFO research group. I am proud of the group of supertalented early and not so early career scholars making up the COALESCE Lab.

The lab was founded to unite the members working on different projects about social networks and cohesion, polarization, and exclusion, to create synergies and collaboration. So far, we have offered thirteen jobs to early career scholars (the latest ones still visible in the "job opportunities" section).

We are also happy to host academic visitors and PhD students, postdocs, and researchers who wish to join the lab with external grants if their research topics closely align with that of the lab (see the "job opportunities" section for possible grants).