This is a reminder for the call for papers for the Historical Networks Research conference 2025 which will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from Wednesday 21 May until Friday 23 May 2025 (Venue to be announced). Deadline for submissions is 1 December 2024 via the conference management platform (https://hnr2025.sciencesconf.org/).

Historical networks

The phenomena studied by the historical sciences are, by their very nature, complex situations: they involve, for example, interwoven personal relationships, collective dynamics that structure social and cultural space, or political and economic systems that operate at local and global levels. The network metaphor is frequently used to describe this entanglement. In recent decades, however, historians have begun to think about ways of formalizing this approach, appropriating the concepts and tools of graph theory to provide a new perspective on archives. The application of formal network analysis to history is now a highly fertile field of experimentation and research. It can be used to analyze the geographical logics of major circulation networks, to highlight brokers in affiliation networks, to compile family trees to reveal their points of contact, to study the occurrences and co-occurrences of concepts in serial texts, to show the evolution of personal social networks, etc. And through a great deal of empirical work, the specific features that historical disciplines bring to network science become apparent: particular attention to the modeling of data that is often incomplete and uncertain, the need to take account of temporality in all its finesse, the necessity to find a language that allows mathematical results to be interpreted in a qualitative narrative.
In 2009, following a workshop dedicated to the application of social network analysis to history, a small community of practice, the Historical Network Research community, was created. It evolved into a series of workshops and then an international conference, of which the present edition is the 10th to date, after conferences in Hamburg, Ghent, Lisbon, Turku, Brno, Luxembourg, Mainz, and Lausanne. 2013 saw the creation of the HNR Collective Bibliography, a central tool for sharing the community’s scientific output. In 2017, the first issue of JHNR, the Journal of Historical Network Research, was published, allowing everyone to share their research in Open Access. Other resources include a YouTube channel with recorded lectures and a newsletter.

2025 Conference focus: Network Data

One topic that is mentioned over and over in the HNR meetings relates to data. In fact, issues related to difficulty of gathering data, data quantity, quality, or missing instances, etc. arise in many talks and papers. With the aim of tackling these issues, HNR 2025 proposes to focus on the various questions centered on data and methods related to their use. Thus, HNR 2025 encourages researchers to share their experiences, problems faced in their research, as well as to discuss proposed solutions. We plan one plenary session dedicated to a reflection, by the community as a whole, about a possible data repository or other kinds of collaborative platforms or tools. We also plan a special track and a workshop on using large language models (LLMs) to extract, transform, and analyze network data.
Obviously, the HNR conference continues to be open to all subjects involving network analysis in historical disciplines.

Topics of study

HNR 2025 welcomes contributions discussing any historical period and geographical area. Authors may be historians, linguists, librarians, archaeologists, art historians, computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, social scientists, as well as scholars from other disciplines working with historical data. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Applications of network analysis to history, art history, ancient history, intellectual history, economic history, social history, media history, political history, history of religions, biography, public history, micro-history, postcolonial history, global history, archaeology, literary history, cultural history.
• Analysis of specific network types, such as geospatial networks, temporal and dynamic networks, two-mode (bipartite) networks, multi-layer networks, multiplex networks.
• Methodological contributions concerning the applicability of network analysis to history, including, for example, modeling, ontologies, linked data, the use of graph metrics, visual network analysis.
• Pedagogical contributions, presenting teaching scenarios, literacy questions, software or feature presentations, interfaces.

Important dates

01.12.2024 deadline for submissions
01.02.2025 notification of acceptance/rejection
01.03.2025 registration opening
21 – 23.05.2025 conference

For further information see https://historicalnetworkresearch.github.io/riodejaneiro/cfp/.