Giordano De Marzo
Menu
Homepage Research Publications
Teaching ▾
Network Science of Socio-Economic Systems
Contact

Network Science of Socio-Economic Systems

Department of Politics and Public Administration, Konstanz University

Winter Semester 2025/2026

This course covers the foundational theories and models in network science, with a focus on socio- economic systems.

Topics

The course will cover the following topics in Network Science:

  • Network theory basics
  • Network growth models
  • Community detection algorithms
  • Processes on Networks
  • Network ensembles
  • Financial and Economic Networks
  • Social Networks

Format

The course takes the form of seminars and coding sessions:

  1. 13 Seminars, the first 7 covering the main topics in Network Science, the following 6 covering more advanced techniques and applications of Network Science to Socio-Economic systems.
  2. 1 Students Q&A Session
  3. 7 Coding Sessions

Grading

Students select a published article from a set of readings or a dataset. The exam consist in reproducing the paper or analyzing the dataset using the techniques discussed in the course. The course grade is based on the student presentation (35%), the code (15%), and on the report (50%). Reports should be 4/5 pages long (including the bibliography) and must contain

  1. Abstract
  2. Introduction
  3. Results
  4. Discussion
  5. Methods
  6. References

Exam Dates

The dates of the exam are flexible. I will create a form to select some exam dates that suits you and publish the dates here.

Coding Sessions

A practical part of exercises connected to the lectures will be offered. It is highly recommended to participate in these coding sesisons because it will help to acquire the skills that are important for the final project. The exercises will not be graded.

Seminars

October 22, 2025 - Introduction to Network Science
October 29, 2025 - Network Theory Basics
November 05, 2025 - Random Graphs and Small World
November 12, 2025 - Scale Free Networks
November 19, 2025 - Measuring Nodes Centrality
November 26, 2025 - Communities in Networks
December 3, 2025 - Processes on Networks
December 10, 2025 - Network Ensembles
December 17, 2025 - Multilayer and Higher Order Networks
January 7, 2026 - Economic and Financial Networks 1
January 14, 2026 - Economic and Financial Networks 2
January 21, 2026 - Social Networks
January 28, 2026 - Advanced Topics in Network Science
February 04, 2026 - Students Q&A

Coding Sessions

October 29, 2025 - Introduction to Network Science in Python
November 5, 2025 - Analysis of real world networks
November 19, 2025 - Centrality measures
November 26, 2025 - Community detection algorithms
December 10, 2025 - Configuration models
January 7, 2026 - Analysis of the world trading network
January 21, 2026 - Analysis of social networks

Seminars

Readings and Slides

Readings and Slides

Readings and Slides

Additional Reading

Readings and Slides

Additional Reading

Readings and Slides

Additional Reading

Readings and Slides

Additional Reading

Readings and Slides

Additional Reading

Readings and Slides

Additional Reading

Coding Sessions

Code

Data

Code

Code

  • Tutorial: Centrality Measures of Airports network. For this tutorial we will use the data from the previous coding session.
  • Exercise: Analyzing the 117th United States Congress Social Network.

Data

For a detailed description of the dataset you can give a look at the original paper Fink, Christian G., et al. "A Congressional Twitter network dataset quantifying pairwise probability of influence." Data in Brief 50 (2023): 109521

Code

  • Tutorial: Community detection in simulated and real networks.
  • Exercise: Community detection applied to Airports network. For this exercise you will use the data from the previous coding sessions.

Data

Network of American football games between Division IA colleges during regular season Fall 2000. From M. Girvan and M. E. J. Newman, Community structure in social and biological networks. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99(12), 7821-7826 (2002).

Code

  • Tutorial: Projection of bipartite networks applied to export networks.

Data

Global trade data from UN Comtrade (2022) containing export values for 171 countries and 5206 products