The Group
Team
Faculty, doctoral and master’s students, research associates, and international visitors advancing social network science together.
Core Faculty
Alejandro Espinosa-Rada
Assistant Professor · Institute of Sociology, PUC
PhD in Sociology, University of Manchester (Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis); previously postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at ETH Zürich’s Social Networks Lab, and currently Visiting Professor at CESO, KU Leuven. His research integrates the sociology of organizations, the sociology of science and knowledge, group dynamics, and social network analysis — focusing on how relational structures shape coordination, inequality, and institutional dynamics, and on computational methods and software for network analysis. Author and maintainer of
netmem; Director of
CHISOCNET; Co-Editor-in-Chief of
Connections; and Scientific Communications Editor of
Network Science.
Faculty profile →
Karina Arias
Associate Professor · School of Government, PUC
PhD in Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University. Her research examines metropolitan governance, inter-municipal cooperation, and the application of network analysis to public administration, focusing on how local governments coordinate around shared policy challenges. She is Principal Investigator of the ANID/FONDECYT project on metropolitan governance networks in Chile and Colombia, and Responsible Investigator of the Avanza UC initiative on governing environmental complexity. Board member of the Chilean Society for Social Network Science (CHISOCNET); member of
REDgob — Grupo de Investigación en Redes de Gobierno.
Faculty profile →
Daniela Luengo
Assistant Professor · College UC & Faculty of Education, PUC
PhD in Educational Policy, University of Rochester. Her research combines the economics of education, quasi-experimental methods, and network analysis to study educational-labor trajectories, equity and inclusion, and the adoption of innovations in school systems. She leads an ANID/FONDECYT Postdoctoral project on social networks among educational actors in the Magallanes region, and a William T. Grant Foundation grant studying housing, networks, and youth mobility in Detroit. She is also a co-investigator on an ANID/FONDECYT Regular project examining teacher mobility in technical-vocational secondary education.
College UC profile → · Faculty of Education profile →
Are you a permanent academic at UC? We welcome faculty from any unit whose work touches social networks — quantitatively, computationally, or substantively — to join the group. Email anespinosa@uc.cl to talk about it.
Doctoral Students
RZ
Raúl Zuleta
PhD Student · Anthropology, PUC
LH
Liliana Hurtado
PhD Student · Communications, PUC
VR
Valquiria Ramos
PhD Student · Communications, PUC
DT
Daniel Toro
PhD Student · Industrial & Systems Engineering, Universidad de Chile; Computer Science, University of Manchester
DC
Diego Caro
PhD Student · Sociology, University of Manchester
RC
Roberto Cantillán
PhD Student · Sociology, PUC
Master’s Students & Research Assistants
LV
Lorenzo Vives
MA, Sociology, PUC
AD
Alberto Durán
MA Student · Sociology, PUC
TP
Trajan Pirkovic
MA Student · Sociology, PUC
Research Associates
External collaborators who hold a continuing affiliation with the group.
FO
Researcher · School of Government and Public Administration, Universidad Mayor, Chile
Social support networks, caregiving systems, and social exclusion.
DP
Associate Professor · CISS, Universidad Mayor, Chile
Social network analysis of peer relationships and behavior in educational settings.
FT
Associate Professor in Business Analytics · Oxford Brookes Business School, UK
Technology adoption, trust in technology, and HR analytics.
GV
Assistant Professor of Research · Division of Epidemiology, University of Utah, USA
Complex systems, statistical computing, and scientific software for social network analysis.
IT
Researcher-Teacher · Faculty of Design, Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile
Computational social science applied to design management, innovation ecosystems, and design for sustainability.
Visitors & Exchanges
| Pavel Krivitsky |
University of New South Wales |
January 2026 |
| Daniel Trujillo Martins Fontes |
Universidade de São Paulo |
July – August 2025 |
| Matías Montero |
University of Oxford |
April – October 2025 |
Internship
| Paloma Rojas |
Design |
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile |
April – September 2025 |
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