Carter's Dissertation Research Page
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This dissertation focuses on the formal theoretical and methodological treatment of large, spatially embedded networks, building on empirical findings regarding interaction in space via a stochastic modeling perspective. Problems as diverse as the spread of disease within human populations, the diffusion of cultural norms, migration, racial/ethnic segregation, and susceptibility to panic and/or revolution have all been linked to the structure of human relations. The framework constructed in this dissertation will allow us (for the first time) to consider such structures within large, spatially embedded populations, and thereby to directly address the linkage between large-scale social processes and social networks beyond the group or organizational level. Similarly, the methods developed herein can be applied to understanding social macrostructure itself, giving us a window on the structural context within which all humans are embedded. This dissertation is primarily a theoretical and methodological work; in its development, it draws both on the structuralist perspectives of theorists such as Blau and Mayhew and on empirical findings concerning human interaction across space. The result is a spatial demography of social networks, which can be subsequently applied to the study of large-scale social processes.
This work has been supported in part by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, NSF SES Grant 0100999, and by NSF IGERT Grant 9354995, with additional support from the NSF ITR/IM program and the Center for the Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at CMU's Institute for Complex Engineered Systems.
