Northwestern professor of sociology Andrew Papachristos presents research on America’s gun violence epidemic and how network science can help us better understand it during the NU Faculty Live event on September 15, 2022. The event, titled “How Can Network and Neighborhood Science Help us Understand and Do Something about America’s Gun Violence Epidemic?” is presented by the Northwestern Alumni Association.
The event takes place at Wiebolt Hall, 340 E Superior St, Chicago, IL 60611 from 5:00 – 7:30 pm CDT. Tickets are $15 for recent alumni (undergraduate classes 2022–12) and current students; and $20 for alumni and friends.
Learn more information about this event and register here.
It’s a cliché to say “we live in a connected world.” But we do. Over the last twenty years, the field of Network Science has consistently demonstrated that the ways in which people are connected affect what we feel, think, and do. The structure of social networks has a profound impact on the friends we make, the people we marry, the votes we cast, the diseases we catch, and the ways we think. This presentation explores how our team at the Northwestern Neighborhood & Network Initiative (N3) uses network science to help us better understand gun violence in American cities and how such insights offer possible pathways to guide gun violence prevention efforts.
Andrew V. Papachristos is currently Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Northwestern Neighborhood & Network Initiative. Papachristos aims to understand how the connected nature of cities—how their citizens, neighborhoods, and institutions are tied to one another—affect what we feel, think, and do. His main research applies network science to the study of gun violence, police misconduct, illegal gun markets, Al Capone, street gangs, and urban neighborhoods. He is also in the process of completing a manuscript on the evolution of black street gangs and politics in Chicago from the 1950s to the early-2000s. Papachristos is also actively involved in policy related research, including the evaluation of gun violence prevention programs in more than a dozen U.S. cities. An author of more than 50 articles, Papachristos’ work has appeared in journals such as JAMA, The American Sociological Review, Criminology, The American Journal of Public Health, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune, among other outlets. Papachristos was awarded an NSF Early CAREER award to examine how violence spreads through high-risk social networks in several U.S. cities. Prior to coming to Northwestern, Papachristos was a professor of sociology at Yale University and director of The Policy Lab. He is a Chicago native and earned his PhD from the University of Chicago. Papachristos is also the Director of the Northwestern Neighborhood & Network Initiative (N3) at the Institute for Policy Research.