Past Seminars

The archive of all our previous seminars

After every seminar, whether you were present or not, you want to come here! You will find all the information about each seminar below, including a fantastic blog. In this blog you will find highlights of the key points of the talks, useful resources for everyday PhD life and some food for thoughts from our biweekly conversations. Notice that the conversations had during our seminars are mostly unrelated to the research title of the talk. They are actually related to challenges in Academia and PhD life.

Moreover, if the speaker allows to record, the recording of the session is uploaded on Youtube, and available to access from our YouTube channel. Each blog is also posted on Twitter/X and Bluesky, and we encourage you to add your thoughts there!

List of past seminars

[#49] Inferring Discrete Stochastic Opinion Dynamics Models & Finding, or not finding, a niche as an interdisciplinary researcher

[#48] Intersectional Inequalities in Social Networks & Finding the Right Audience for Your Research

In this seminar, we had the pleasure of hosting Samuel Martin-Gutierrez (Complexity Science Hub) to discuss how social categories like race or socioeconomic status shape the way we form connections, and the challenges of publishing and presenting interdisciplinary research.

[#47] Network mutual information measures for graph similarity & Re-visiting voluntary sacrifices in academia

In our last seminar, we had the pleasure of hosting Helcio Felipe, a PhD candidate from the Central European University, as well as running our first (unofficial) hybrid seminar, with in-person attendees in Vienna!

[#46] Structurally Distorted Communication in a Population & Interdisciplinary Research Done Right

In our last seminar, we welcomed Sagar Kumar (Northeastern University), who talked to us about the intersection of communication theory and mathematical modeling.

[#45] Assessing the Impact of Group Interactions on Climate-related Opinion Change in Reddit & From Padawan to Jedi Master: Transitioning from PhD to Independent Researcher in Academia

Hey Netfollower, if you’re in that gray area of transitioning from your PhD to becoming an independent researcher, the last seminar was for you! Alessia Antelmi from the University of Turin talked about that transition on February 20th.

[#44] Researching Next-Gen Social Media Ecosystems & Scientific Research in the Age of Big Players

In this seminar, we had the pleasure of hosting Lucio LaCava (University of Calabria) to discuss the rise of decentralized social networks and the evolving landscape of scientific research.

[#43] Finding hidden swing voters in the Twitter discourse & Impostor syndrome and your PhD as a marathon

To kick off the 2025 seminar series, we had the great pleasure of hosting Arianna Pera (NERDS, IT University of Copenhagen)

[#42] Fantastic Simulations of Social Systems and Where to Find Them & The Butterfly Effect in the Life of an Industrial Engineer: From Snack Logistics to Simulating the Roman Empire

To cap off our year 2024, we welcomed Francesco Bertolotti (Università LIUC)

[#41] Networks of chemical automata as a solution to programmability in unconventional computing & How to survive lack of motivation in academia

Ever experienced a lack of motivation while doing research? Motivation can be a powerful ally in handling the pressures of academia. Amaury J. L. Diaz discussed this in the last NetPLACE seminar.

[#40] Revealing multilevel political selective exposure, echo chambers, and polarization on social media & Integration of Theory and Methodology

We welcomed Yuan Zhang from University of Zurich, who talked about selective exposure and echo chambers on social media.