The Historical Networks Research conference 2026 will take place in Turin, Italy, from Monday 20 July to Wednesday 22 July, 2026 at the University of Turin.

The keynote speaker for HNR2026 will be Scott Weingart, author of The Network Turn and Exploring Big Historical Data: The Historian’s Macroscope. More information about HNR2026 here.

The phenomena studied by the historical sciences are, by their very nature, complex situations: they involve, for example, interwoven personal relationships, collective dynamics that structure social and cultural space, or political and economic systems that operate at local and global levels. The network metaphor is frequently used to describe this entanglement. In recent decades, however, historians have begun to think about ways of formalizing this approach, appropriating the concepts and tools of graph theory to provide a new perspective on archives. The application of formal network analysis to history is now a fertile field of experimentation and research. It can be used to analyze the geographical logics of major circulation networks, to highlight brokers in affiliation networks, to compile family trees to reveal their points of contact, to study the occurrences and co-occurrences of concepts in serial texts, to show the evolution of personal social networks, and many more applications emerging every year. Through a great deal of empirical work, the specific features that historical disciplines bring to network science become apparent: particular attention to the modeling of data that is often incomplete and uncertain, the need to take account of temporality in all its finesse, the necessity to find a language that allows mathematical results to be interpreted in a qualitative narrative.

In 2009, following a workshop dedicated to the application of social network analysis to history, a small community of practice, the Historical Network Research community, was created. It evolved into a series of workshops and then an international conference, of which the present edition is the 11th to date, after conferences in Hamburg, Ghent, Lisbon, Turku, Brno, Luxembourg, Mainz, Lausanne, and Rio de Janeiro. 2013 saw the creation of the HNR Collective Bibliography, a central tool for sharing the community’s scientific output. In 2017, the first issue of JHNR, the Journal of Historical Network Research, was published, allowing researchers to share their research in complete Open Access. Other resources include a YouTube channel with recorded lectures and a newsletter.

The 2026 edition of the conference will focus on the theme Sources, exploring their role in historical network research.

Since the so-called network turn, formal network research has transformed scholarship across the sciences and humanities. Applied to history, it has expanded research methods, encouraged interdisciplinary dialogue, and opened new perspectives on both past and present. Yet historical sources remain challenging: they are often fragmented, incomplete, shaped by bias, or considered inadequate for network analysis.

This conference invites participants to reflect on how sources — whether people, books, ideas, organizations, archaeological remains, archival documents, artworks, or other forms of evidence — make network research possible and meaningful. We aim to foster debate on the opportunities and limits that sources present, while encouraging innovative methodologies and cross-disciplinary perspectives. We encourage submission of all kind of papers regarding historical networks research, and we particularly welcome papers addressing: the identification, retrieval, and use of sources;

• challenges of abstraction in network analysis and possible solutions;
• case studies demonstrating the heuristic value of network methodologies;
• theoretical and empirical reflections on how network thinking reshapes sources;
• data extraction, modeling, and visualization from historical sources (including experimental treatment of sources with so-called AI (LLM, NLP));

We especially encourage interdisciplinary approaches and contributions that combine methodological reflection with empirical research.

The HNR conference continues to be open to all subjects involving network analysis in historical disciplines

HNR 2026 welcomes contributions discussing any historical period and geographical area. Authors may be historians, linguists, librarians, archaeologists, art historians, computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, social scientists, as well as scholars from other disciplines working with historical data. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Applications of network analysis to history, art history, ancient history, intellectual history, economic history, social history, media history, political history, history of religions, biography, public history, micro-history, postcolonial history, global history, archaeology, literary history, cultural history.
• Analysis of specific network types, such as geospatial networks, temporal and dynamic networks, two-mode (bipartite) networks, multi-layer networks, multiplex networks.
• Methodological contributions concerning the applicability of network analysis to history, including, for example, modeling, ontologies, linked data, the use of graph metrics, visual network analysis.
• Pedagogical contributions, presenting teaching scenarios, literacy questions, software or feature presentations, interfaces.

December 21, 2025: deadline for submissions (extended due to a technical issue)

February 23-24, 2026: notification of acceptance/rejection

March 15, 2026: registration opens

June 1, 2026: Book of abstracts published

July 20-22, 2026: conference