The LCDS will host a seminar by Dr Alejandro Espinosa-Rada, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven (Belgium). The event will take place on Monday 16 February 2026, 2:00–3:00 pm in the Butler Room, Nuffield College.
Dr Espinosa-Rada’s research sits at the intersection of group dynamics, the sociology of social networks and knowledge, and network modelling. His academic journey includes a PhD from the Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis at the University of Manchester and roles at ETH Zurich’s Social Networks Lab. He also co-hosts Knitting Networks, a bilingual podcast on social network science endorsed by the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA).
In his seminar titled “Identification with Informal Social Groups: Evidence from an Undergraduate Student Community”, Dr Espinosa-Rada will present findings from a study that explores how identification emerges within informal, overlapping groups formed through everyday interactions. While sociological research has traditionally focused on identification with broad, established social categories such as gender or nationality, this work shifts attention to the nuanced dynamics of groups that arise organically within social contexts.
The study, conducted with engineering undergraduate students in Switzerland, integrates social identity theory with relational approaches to social structure. It conceptualises identification as an evaluative orientation toward group membership shaped by interdependent social processes rather than individual attributes or simple dyadic ties. Using advanced network autocorrelation models, the research examines how relational ties, locally defined norms, overlapping group memberships and experiential evaluations each contribute to how individuals identify with informal social groups.
The results demonstrate that group identification is patterned by multiple interacting dimensions of social organisation, and that different activities within these groups create distinct social situations that influence identification processes. The findings offer a sociological account of identification grounded in the everyday social structure of informal group life.
This seminar is open to university members and will be of interest to those working on social networks, group processes, identity formation, and relational methodologies.