On Thursday, 22 January, the tenth traditional Meeting of Researchers in the Field of Network Analysis (https://netslo.mf.uni-lj.si/) took place at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. The event was organised by members of the Centre for Methodology and Informatics and the Chair of Social Informatics at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, in cooperation with colleagues from the School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana, the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, the “Jožef Stefan” Institute, and the Faculty of Information Studies in Novo mesto.
Network analysis, often described as one of the central scientific paradigms of the 21st century, is a distinctly transdisciplinary field of research. In recent decades, it has made an important contribution to understanding complex social systems, and later also to explaining the structure and functioning of the web. Today, it also plays a key role in the life sciences, where network approaches enable new insights into biological and neurophysiological processes and act as an important accelerator of scientific progress.
The programme of this year’s meeting offered a wide range of topics and methodological approaches – from the analysis of scientific collaborations among European countries, through bisociative knowledge discovery from scientific literature, to contributions in the areas of deep learning on bibliographic data and the analysis of accessibility in public transport networks. This was followed by lectures on brain network analysis, Instagram hashtag networks in the context of slow, fast and ultra-fast fashion, and advanced approaches to premise selection in the Lean environment.
The scientific programme concluded with a lecture by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Márton Pósfai (Central European University), who presented modern models of physical networks that take into account spatial embeddedness as well as the material properties of nodes and links.
The meeting concluded in a relaxed atmosphere over a joint dinner, which enabled participants to continue discussions and strengthen research connections. The tenth anniversary edition once again confirmed that NetSlo remains the central meeting point for network analysis researchers in Slovenia and an important platform for the exchange of ideas and networking across different scientific disciplines.