Who shapes the landscape of African politics scholarship, and who is missing?

Find the answer in the recently published paper in @pspolisci.bsky.social by Zack Zimbalist (@wuvienna.bsky.social & Southern Centre for Inequality Studies) and @elisaomodei.bsky.social (CEU)

🔗 doi.org/10.1017/S104...

The Structure of Psychopathology on Reddit: Network Analysis of Mental Health Communities in Relation to the ICD Diagnostic System Background: Social media platforms such as Reddit have become important spaces where individuals articulate their distress, seek support, and explore alternative ways of understanding mental health ou...

What does psychopathology look like from the perspective of people seeking support? Network analysis of Reddit communities vs diagnostic criteria.

Just out in @jmirpub.bsky.social

www.jmir.org/2026/1/e80958/
@sreblet.bsky.social @petrakn.bsky.social
@ceu-dnds.bsky.social @ulresearch.bsky.social

Piero Birello - From Urban Structure to Human Dynamics | CEU 3MT Competition 2026 The CEU Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) 2026 Final celebrated the diversity, depth, and societal relevance of doctoral research at Central European University. In just three minutes each, 11 PhD candidates presented their research to a broad audience, demonstrating how complex ideas can be communicated with clarity and impact. Piero Birello is a PhD candidate in Network and Data Science at CEU, supervised by Márton Karsai. His research explores how proximity-based urban planning—especially the 15-minute city concept—shapes how people move through cities. By analyzing urban structure, mobility patterns, and access to amenities, Piero examines how planning decisions influence population mixing and emerging forms of socio-economic segregation. Learn more: https://www.ceu.edu/ https://threeminutethesis.uq.edu.au/watch-3mt #3mt #ThreeMinuteThesis #seeuatceu Central European University is an institution of advanced research and teaching, dedicated to socially and morally responsible intellectual inquiry. More from CEU: Home https://www.ceu.edu/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/WeAreCEU Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/weareceu.bsky.social Instagram https://www.instagram.com/weareceu/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/school/central-european-university Threads https://www.threads.net/@weareceu Subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/CentralEuropeanUniversityChannel

🎉 Our PhD candidate Piero Birello won the People’s Choice Award at this year’s 3MT! 👏🏙️

With “Does the city decide how we move and who we meet?”, he showed how urban structure shapes mobility—and social encounters—in ways we rarely notice.

Supervisor: @martonkarsai.bsky.social.

▶️ bit.ly/3M8By0s

🎓 Yesterday, January 21, 2026, Júlia Számely successfully defended her PhD dissertation on misinformation engagement, combining survey data with digital trace data to better understand who engages with misinformation online—and why.

Congratulations! 🎉📚

#WeAreCEU #NetworkScience #PhDLife

When can higher-order networks be simplified without losing what matters?

New papers in @physrevlett.bsky.social and @natcomms.nature.com by Federico Battiston & collaborators introduce structural and dynamical reducibility frameworks for higher-order networks.

🔗 bit.ly/4sNwfUN
🔗 bit.ly/4sPYCBM

How do micro-level mechanisms shape polarization and influence?

Our PhD candidate Onur Bal studies network polarization with ERGMs and simulations, and maps influence in jazz musician networks using collaboration and audio data. 🎷📊

#WeAreCEU #NetworkScience #SocialDataScience #SeeUatCEU

Season’s Greetings 🎄

Thank you for following and connecting with us in 2025!

Wishing you a peaceful holiday season and all the best for the year ahead ✨

🎉 A special symposium at CEU brought together scholars from around the world to celebrate Professor János Kertész’s 75th birthday, honoring his contributions to network science, his mentorship, and the research communities he helped build.

🔗 Read more: bit.ly/4j89cPX

Physik und Soziales: Verstehen, wie die Menschen ticken Die Physikerin Elisa Omodei beforscht Sozialverhalten im Internet und offline. Ihre Studien in Wien behandeln Fehlinformationen, politische Polarisierung und Diskriminierung.

🔬🧠 𝗣𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘁𝘆

diepressecom.bsky.social recently featured DNDS Associate Professor elisaomodei.bsky.social, exploring how her background in physics informs her research on human behavior, misinformation, and polarization.

Read the article (in German): bit.ly/49gj2vT

Higher-order interactions shape collective human behaviour - Nature Human Behaviour Battiston et al. discuss the emerging paradigm of higher-order network science and its applications to social systems and human dynamics.

Social interactions rarely happen in pairs alone.

A new Nature Human Behaviour Perspective by Federico Battiston, @onkarsadekar.bsky.social & colleagues shows how higher-order social networks reveal group-level dynamics behind contagion, cooperation & collective behavior.

🔗 bit.ly/3XWXGNN

PhD candidate Omar Henderson presented new work on epidemic spreading in temporal networks.

Using the reinforcing SIS model mapped to the temporal event graph, he showed how reachability offers a fast, tractable way to study spreading and how burstiness and degree heterogeneity shape outcomes.

3rd-year PhD student @bojanevkoski.bsky.social presented new work on mapping the structure of psychopathology using large-scale, heterogeneous data.

He compared insights from online support communities with clinical and registry data to uncover patterns that may inform future diagnostics.

Use of mobile phone data to measure behavioral response to SMS evacuation alerts This study examines behavioral responses after mobile phone evacuation alerts during the February 2024 wildfires in Valparaíso, Chile. Using anonymize…

🚨📱 New paper out! Using anonymized mobile phone data from the 2024 Valparaíso wildfires, we examine how people respond to SMS evacuation alerts.

Findings show strong alert fatigue, unequal evacuation patterns across income groups, and major spillover effects.

bit.ly/3MvKGw1

CEU DNDS is looking for a new Assistant Professor to join us in #Vienna!

If you work in #NetworkScience or #ComputationalSocialScience, we’d love to hear from you.

👉 bit.ly/44lfXb4

On Dec 3, 4th-year PhD candidate @loreb92.bsky.social presented his research on group dynamics in human & animal systems.

His work shows how leadership shifts affect software teams, how bird groups form stable higher-order social cores, and how to detect such structures from data.

#NetworkScience

On Dec 3, 4th-year PhD candidate Martí Medina-Hernández presented how ML and network science can reveal hidden patterns of corruption across Mexico, Bulgaria & Italy.

His work shows how data-driven methods can support stronger public-integrity policy.

#WeAreCEU #NetworkScience #CorruptionResearch

4th-year PhD candidate Helcio Felippe presented new work on using information theory to summarize network structure — including a measure of network & hypergraph similarity and a principled way to reduce higher-order representations. 👏

#NetworkScience

Fourth-year PhD student @claraeminente.bsky.social presented new work on two fronts: why people overestimate the size of racial minority groups in the US, and how intersectional homophily might reduce racial segregation in school friendship networks. 👏

#WeAreCEU #NetworkScience

New study alert 📢

Simple X profile metrics—like tweet frequency and account age—are linked to users’ tendency to share misinformation.

By CEU DNDS’s @Júlia Számely & @elisaomodei.bsky.social + collaborators.

Read more: bit.ly/3XS4o7A

Collective Dynamics in Evolutionary Processes and Strategic Group Interactions

🎉 Congratulations to Dr. Onkar Sadekar @onkarsadekar.bsky.social on successfully defending his PhD in Network Science!

His dissertation on collective dynamics and higher-order interactions was awarded summa cum laude.

Details: bit.ly/4ilGfj8

🚨 New paper in EPJ Data Science! 🚨

@elisaomodei.bsky.social, Andrea Lo Sasso & Loredana Bellantuono study how cancer incidence relates to the Sustainable Development Goals using complex networks & ML.

🌱 Beyond health: agriculture, resources & water also matter.

🔗 bit.ly/4hHnwhW

𝗙𝗮𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘆 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 ✨

As part of our mini-interview series with DNDS faculty, today we introduce you to @elisaomodei.bsky.social, Associate Professor at @weareceu.bsky.social

#MeetDNDS #WeAreCEU #SocialDataScience #NetworkScience

Complexity, Networks & the Economy: A Life in Models - 75th Birthday Symposium honoring János Kertész

Join us at @weareceu.bsky.social for a special academic 𝘀𝘆𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘂𝗺 𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗿 𝗝𝗮́𝗻𝗼𝘀 𝗞𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗲́𝘀𝘇’𝘀 𝟳𝟱𝘁𝗵 𝗯𝗶𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗱𝗮𝘆 and his exceptional contributions to 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲, 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲, & the study of 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀.
📆 Dec. 1
📍Vienna
Find all the information here 👉 bit.ly/3Jf5vuq

📢 𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗛-𝗔𝗧 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗱𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄 & 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗙𝗲𝘀𝘁 @ 𝗖𝗘𝗨 – 𝗗𝗲𝗰 𝟰, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱!

Explore digital tools & projects in the humanities from CEU and partner institutions across Austria.

📍 CEU Auditorium, Vienna
🔗 Event details & registration: bit.ly/47dSGso

#DigitalHumanities #CEU

𝗙𝗮𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘆 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 ✨

As part of our mini-interview series with DNDS faculty, today we introduce you to Balázs Vedres @vedres.bsky.social, Professor at @weareceu.bsky.social.

#MeetDNDS #WeAreCEU #NetworkScience #SocialDataScience

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder in online peer support communities: a Reddit case study - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Premenstrual dysphoric disorder in online peer support communities: a Reddit case study

🚨 New study in Scientific Reports!

Online peer support can complement clinical understanding of PMDD.

Analysis of 17k+ Reddit users over 12 years shows shifting comorbidities, diverse symptoms & treatments.

👉 bit.ly/4nySxGR

#WeAreCEU #PMDD #MentalHealth #Reddit #DNDSatCEU

𝗙𝗮𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘆 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 ✨

As part of our mini-interview series with DNDS faculty, today we introduce you to János Kertész, Professor at @weareceu.bsky.social.

#MeetDNDS #WeAreCeu #NetworkScience #DataScience

🎓 Welcome to our new PhD cohort in Network Science!

(top row, L→R) Nathalia, Miguel @msanchezc.bsky.social, Zhina
(bottom row, L→R) Jiachen, Dima and Laura

Wishing you an inspiring start to your journey—looking forward to all the ideas and discoveries ahead! 💡🌍

𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗔𝗰𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗮𝘁 𝗗𝗡𝗗𝗦!

We started the year by doing a mini interview to our faculty members, so you can get to know them too. Today, we introduce you to @markwittek.bsky.social, Assistant Professor at @weareceu.bsky.social

#meetDNDS #weareceu #computationalsocialscience

Are digital traces giving us a biased view of polarization? 🤔

New paper by Yijing Chen, @elisaomodei.bsky.social & co-authors shows that APIs capturing only visible engagement (💬 YouTube comments) may suggest stronger segregation than less visible forms (▶️ views).

🔗 bit.ly/3JAp2Fz