讲座主题：Innovation in Research Methods: Application of Social Network Analysis for Analyzing Human Behavior

主讲人：Praveen Kumar， 波士顿学院社会工作学院副教授

讲座地点：4001百老汇官方网站楼6-210

讲座时间：11月3日10:00-11:30

主讲人简介/Bio/introduction

Dr. Kumar is an Associate Professor at the Boston College School of Social Work. He is also the US National Institutes of Health Climate Change and Health Scholar for the year 2023. In this capacity, he works with the NIH agencies contributing to shaping their climate and health research agenda.

Dr. Kumar’s research can be classified into two interconnected domains: 1) Topical, and 2) Methodological. On the topical front, his research is at the intersections of Climate Change, Natural Resource Management, and Energy Access. His research is shaped by and informs multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 13 (climate action), SDG 7 (energy access), SDG 5 (gender equality), and SDG 3 (health and well-being). He studies the environmental health risks and inequities in communities. He also explores how climate change, policy failure, and low adoption of evidence-based interventions exacerbate environmental degradation, and their impact on the health and well-being of communities, particularly women and children. On the methodological front, he is a System Scientist, and deploys systems approaches especially social network analysis and systems mapping in his research. He also collaborates with other scholars in cognate areas to advance research by deploying these systems approaches. He leverages these methods to guide his empirical work on how human behavior and the environment shape the adoption of evidence-based interventions that reduce environmental risks and burdens.

Dr. Kumar is an engineer turned social scientist. He holds an undergraduate in Engineering from the University of Mumbai. He holds a PhD in Social Work, as a McDonnell International Scholar, from the Washington University in St. Louis.

讲座摘要/Introduction

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is the process of investigating the structure and composition of social entities using network and graph theory. The presentation will discuss the fundamental concept of Network theory and it will discuss its application in multiple research projects. It will also discuss the utility of doing different types of social network analysis in field experiments, particularly focusing on human behavior and behavioral sciences.