Building sustainable societies: the emergence of social categories in networks of cooperation and competition

Larger project:

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This project aims to generate insight into how people establish cooperative networks and how these networks may be sustained over time. To explore this question we will draw on the social identity and social network perspective; two highly significant bodies of literature in the social sciences. The integration of these two perspectives has only been used on a small scale due to methodological and statistical constraints. However, exciting new innovations have now made this integration more feasible. The project will use, and further develop, an experimental tool – the Virtual Interaction Application (VIAPPL) (Durrheim, Quayle & Tooke, 2013). VIAPPL has been designed to study emerging networks and multiple social categories. Furthermore, the project will also apply cutting-edge advances in the social network field. These advanced methods allow us to understand the social phenomena which will arise in the emerging VIAPPL networks of cooperation and competition. Through methodological and statistical advances, which this project will contribute to, we aim to advance the scope and integration of social science research, both conceptually and methodologically.

Researchers:

Kim Titlestad - University of Groningen
Tom Postmes - University of Groningen
Tom Snijders - University of Groningen
Kevin Durrheim - University of KwaZulu-Natal
Michael Quayle - University of Limerick

Educational program of the department:

This project is funded by the European Commission for one PhD student and not linked to other educational programmes

Names of courses:

Topics of bachelor theses:

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Topics of master theses:

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Cooperations exist within the department:

Kim Titlestad - University of Groningen, Social Psychology
Tom Postmes - University of Groningen, Social Psychology

Cooperations exist within faculty, university, (inter)nationally:

Tom Snijders - University of Groningen, Sociology
Kevin Durrheim - University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), Psychology
Michael Quayle - University of Limerick (Ireland), Psychology

Representative publications:

Successful grant proposals or other achievements:

Erasmus Mundus INSPIRE Scholarship is funding this PhD project

PhD projects or smaller reserach projects

Theme:

University's focus areas:

Sustainable Society