Network analysis

6 April 2026

This week we tackle another common technique made possible by digital humanities, network analysis.

Reading

• Ruth Ahnert et al., The Network Turn: Changing Perspectives in the Humanities (Cambridge University Press, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108866804.
  • Introduction, 1–9.
  • Chapter 1: Networks Are Always Metaphorical, 13–24.
  • Chapter 5: Quantifying Culture, 73–88.
• Catherine Medici, “Using Network Analysis to Understand Early Modern Women,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 13 no. 1 (2018): 153–62, https://doi.org/10.1353/emw.2018.0058.

Watch

Martin Grandjean’s, Introduction to Social Network Analysis. This is a five-part series. Make sure to watch at least the first video.

Assignment

• Second self reflection due. 2–3 paragraph self reflection on how things are going, what questions you have, and what you are excited about learning. See the assignments page for details. You can turn in self reflections through email.
• Explore Ruth Ahnert, Sebastian Ahnert, and Kim Albrecht, Tudor Networks and Six Degrees of Francis Bacon.

Activities

• Pair and share: What were you able to do with mapping data? What questions do you still have?
• Discussion: Network analysis and historical argument.
• An introduction to network analysis and network data structures.
• Network analysis with SNiGB.

Packages to install

• igraph an R package for working with network data.
• tidygraph a tidy API for graph/network manipulation.
• ggraph an extension of ggplot2 aimed at supporting network graphs.

Resources

• Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (1973): 1360–80, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2776392.
• Florian Kerschbaumer et al., eds., The Power of Networks: Prospects of Historical Network Research (Routledge, 2020), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315189062.
• Journal of Historical Network Research.
• Awesome Network Analysis.

Network analysis with R

• Katherine Ognyanova, Static and dynamic network visualization with R.
• Eric D. Kolaczyk and Gábor Csárdi, Statistical Analysis of Network Data with R, (Springer, 2014), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0983-4.
• Jesse Sadler, Introduction to Network Analysis with R: Creating static and interactive network graphs.

Network analysis R packages

CRAN network analysis task view

• igraph an R package for working with network data.
  • Michael Antonov et al., “Igraph Enables Fast and Robust Network Analysis Across Programming Languages,” arXiv:2311.10260, preprint, arXiv, November 16, 2023, http://arxiv.org/abs/2311.10260.
• tidygraph a tidy API for graph/network manipulation.
• ggraph an extension of ggplot2 aimed at supporting network graphs.
• netrankr: Implementation or various centrality measures.