Eric Widmer
Research project
Couple relationships and relational contexts: a network approach
Project summary
Network analysis is an interdisciplinary field of research. It aims to develop theoretical and methodological approaches to better understand how interconnections between entities form complex structures with their own properties, and thereby influence their constituent parts. For the past two decades, however, I have been working on the development and application of a network perspective to family relationships. These relationships are part of complex relational chains, which the usual quantitative methods of the social sciences, such as the analysis of large-scale surveys based on standardized questionnaires, can only capture to a very limited extent. Social networks influence couples’ trajectories in various ways, while couples’ trajectories affect social networks. It is this duality between couple dynamics and personal networks that I propose to explore in depth during my residency at Iméra, on the basis of various quantitative analyses and qualitative material.
