2. What's one interesting fact about you that your colleagues probably don't know?

I have been a devoted Arsenal supporter since 2003, which means I have chosen two decades of emotional torture. When I lived in Asia, I spent many sleepless nights watching matches; now, in the US, I live in an isolated world until I watch the match in delayed live—thank you, YouTube TV. Being a Gooner means that I have been experiencing the agony of near wins, but always falling short. In 2026, when Arsenal finally won the league, I kept a long-standing promise to myself and flew to London to join the celebrations at the Emirates. I began this journey as a single graduate student, and I arrived in London as a husband and father of three; the most meaningful part was watching my son experience that long-awaited victory with me in North London.

3. What aspects of network-related research are you most passionate about?

In management and organizational research, we know a great deal about which network structures and positions support success—centrality, brokerage, cohesion, etc.—but we know far less about how people, especially newcomers, actually move into those positions. I am particularly interested in the obstacles that early-career professionals face: uncertainty about where to start, cultural and structural barriers inside organizations, and the role of self-doubt in blocking attempts to venture new relationships. Although trained originally as a structuralist, I have turned toward psychological mechanisms more recently—how people experience their networks, what motivates them to invest in or withdraw from relationships, and how those experiences in turn reshape network structure. I am still actively learning in this space, developing a voice. Connecting psychological insight with network theory is something that continues to excite me.

4. What inspired your research interests in networks, and when did you realize that you want to be a network scholar?

My interest in networks emerged from an experience of being a network broker between two worlds. When I began graduate school, I took on the role of leading a young adult group at my church that grew from about 4–5 people to around 30–40. I was deeply committed and tried to be available to everyone, but after a year of pushing myself to the limit, I realized the group struggled to welcome newcomers and distribute responsibilities. At the same time, I was taking a social networks course and reading Coleman, Burt, Blau, and others, which made me think differently about the absence of relationships between members, or “empty spaces” in the network. Structural holes helped the leaders connect and take care of the group more efficiently. They can also be crucial spaces where new leaders emerge, new capabilities develop, and communities become more resilient. That experience showed me how deeply network structures shape collective experiences, and how network theory can inform organizational life. It was then that I realized I wanted to be a network scholar, in particular a broker who connects theory and practice, moving ideas back and forth between academia and the world.

5. Would you like to give any advice to more junior researchers who are studying social networks?

I do not wish to give wrong advice, but I think this realization helped me as a network scholar: treat networks as more than just variables. Network thinking often requires seeing patterns underneath what you observe. Once we measure relationships and convert them into matrices and metrics, it becomes very easy to forget what is actually moving through those ties. If we ignore that, we risk producing uninformative theories that feel like mechanical applications of methods rather than meaningful explanations of organizational, professional, and personal life.

Randall Collins wrote an essay titled The Sociological Eye and Its Blinders. I found this extremely useful. Network scholars are the ones who can benefit a lot from developing a sociological eye—to see patterns of relationships and understand how they build up people or hinder them. But such an eye is often not a natural one. It needs focus and training.

One way to develop this network-seeing eye is to take a step back from your own experiences, people, and their relationships from afar. Then, be curious and be bold in retrieving and giving new understanding to those relationships. But always remember that we are studying “social” networks—patterns of relationships between people. So the other important advice is to talk to people in those networks. Listen to what they think about the relationships. This means that we must understand the inner workings of these relationships before we theorize about networks. I believe this is essential for us to rise as social scientists, while bringing something different from what more competent data analysts bring.