Benjamin Cornwell | |
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![]() Benjamin Cornwell (Ithaca, New York, 2023) | |
Born | |
Alma mater | University of Chicago |
Known for | Contributions to social network analysis, sequence analysis |
Spouse | Erin York Cornwell |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Sociology, Social epidemiology |
Institutions | Cornell University |
Doctoral advisor | Edward Laumann |
Other academic advisors | Linda Waite, Jason Beckfield |
Benjamin Thomas Cornwell (born April 30, 1978) is an American sociologist. He is Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2007, where he studied under Edward Laumann, Linda Waite, and Jason Beckfield. He works on methods to study issues involving social inequality, the epidemic spread of disease, and collective behavior.
Benjamin Cornwell was born to Thomas and Susan (Smith) Cornwell in 1978 in Huntington, West Virginia. Through his maternal great-grandmother, Edna Alice (Hatfield) Smith, he is a cousin of Devil Anse Hatfield and Henry D. Hatfield. His paternal 4th great-grandfather is Thomas Hannan, a revolutionary war soldier and the first Anglo settler of the Kanawha River region of Virginia (now West Virginia) [1]
He earned his B.A. in sociology in 2000 at the University of Cincinnati, his M.A. at The Ohio State University (with James Moody) in 2001, and his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 2007. His dissertation was titled Physical Function and Social Action, which argues that health is an important factor in determining individuals' positions within larger social networks. [2] During his time as a student at Chicago, he was a research assistant for the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, on which he eventually became a co-investigator.
He also served for several years as a teaching intern and research assistant for Donald N. Levine while at Chicago. [3] He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on the Demography and Economics of Aging. He was hired as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Cornell in 2008, and was appointed as chair of that department in 2020, during the height of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
His research has advanced sociological methods, particularly in the areas of social network analysis and sequence analysis. [4] One of his most important papers, co-authored with Kim Weeden, used data on the networks of students on college campuses to demonstrate that the risk of the epidemic spread of SARS-CoV-2 could be curbed by shutting down particularly large classes and moving them online. [5] [6] [7] [8]
He used national survey data to show that while older adults tend to have smaller social networks than do younger adults (e.g., due to repeated personal losses), they are generally more involved in community activities than are younger people. [9] [10] [11] As a result, they are usually able to replace lost network ties with new ones, leading to homeostasis in their social networks. [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]
His work on the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire has shown how people's risk of dying in an emergency evacuation is associated with how they are tied to the other people who are present when the disaster occurs. [18] [19] [20] Those who are present with a larger group, and/or with closer contacts whom they are less willing to abandon, are more likely to die. [21] This work emphasizes that the popular concept of "panic" rarely shapes behavior in emergencies, and that people instead tend to work rationally to maintain preexisting social roles and connections during these situations. [22] [23] [24]
In 2017, the American Sociological Association's section on methodology awarded Cornwell the Leo Goodman award for distinctive contributions to sociological methodology, in recognition of his work in social network analysis and sequence analysis. He is an inaugural member of the international Sequence Analysis Association's advisory board. He has applied sequence analysis to the study of individuals' time-use patterns, which have revealed important gender differences in time allocation, among other topics, with collaborators Jonathan Gershuny (CBE) and Oriel Sullivan. [25]
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the discipline of sociology:
Talcott Parsons was an American sociologist of the classical tradition, best known for his social action theory and structural functionalism. Parsons is considered one of the most influential figures in sociology in the 20th century. After earning a PhD in economics, he served on the faculty at Harvard University from 1927 to 1973. In 1930, he was among the first professors in its new sociology department. Later, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard.
Gerontology is the study of the social, cultural, psychological, cognitive, and biological aspects of aging. The word was coined by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov in 1903, from the Greek γέρων (gérōn), meaning "old man", and -λογία (-logía), meaning "study of". The field is distinguished from geriatrics, which is the branch of medicine that specializes in the treatment of existing disease in older adults. Gerontologists include researchers and practitioners in the fields of biology, nursing, medicine, criminology, dentistry, social work, physical and occupational therapy, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, economics, political science, architecture, geography, pharmacy, public health, housing, and anthropology.
Sociology of disaster or sociological disaster research is a sub-field of sociology that explores the social relations amongst both natural and human-made disasters. Its scope includes local, national, and global disasters - highlighting these as distinct events that are connected by people through created displacement, trauma, and loss. These connections, whether that is as a survivor, working in disaster management, or as a perpetrator role, is non-discrete and a complex experience that is sought to be understood through this sub-field. Interdisciplinary in nature, the field is closely linked with environmental sociology and sociocultural anthropology.
Ernest Watson Burgess was a Canadian-American urban sociologist who was professor at the University of Chicago. He was the 24th President of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
The American Journal of Sociology is a peer-reviewed bi-monthly academic journal that publishes original research and book reviews in the field of sociology and related social sciences. It was founded in 1895 as the first journal in its discipline. It is along with American Sociological Review considered one of the top journals in sociology.
Harrison Colyar White was an American sociologist who was the Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. White played an influential role in the “Harvard Revolution” in social networks and the New York School of relational sociology. He is credited with the development of a number of mathematical models of social structure including vacancy chains and blockmodels. He has been a leader of a revolution in sociology that is still in process, using models of social structure that are based on patterns of relations instead of the attributes and attitudes of individuals.
Ronald Stuart Burt is an American sociologist. He is the Charles M. Harper Leadership Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University. He is most notable for his research and writing on social networks and social capital, particularly the concept of structural holes in a social network.
John H. Gagnon was a pioneering sociologist of human sexuality who wrote and edited 15 books and over 100 articles. He collaborated with William Simon to develop the piece he is perhaps best recognized for: "Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality" (1973). He was Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he taught and from 1968 to 1998. In that same time frame, he also dedicated himself to advancing the field of sociology through his research.
David Oscar Moberg was an American Christian scholar, who was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Marquette University. His areas of specialization included methodology in qualitative research, sociology of religion, sociology of American evangelicals, ageing and religion (gerontology).
Erdman Ballagh Palmore is an American gerontologist. He is Professor Emeritus of Medical Sociology at Duke University and has written several books, including Facts on Aging Quiz, and numerous articles on aging.
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors, sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for analyzing the structure of whole social entities as well as a variety of theories explaining the patterns observed in these structures. The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.
Networks in electoral behavior, as a part of political science, refers to the relevance of networks in forming citizens’ voting behavior at parliamentary, presidential or local elections. There are several theories emphasizing different factors which may shape citizens' voting behavior. Many influential theories ignore the possible influence of individuals' networks in forming vote choices and focus mainly on the effects of own political attitudes – such as party loyalties or party identification developed in childhood proposed by the Michigan model, or on the influence of rational calculations about the political parties’ ideological positions as proposed by spatial and valence theories. These theories offer models of electoral behavior in which individuals are not analyzed within their social networks and environments. In a more general context, some authors warn that the hypothesis testing done mainly based on sample surveys and focused on individuals’ attributes without looking at relational data seems to be a poor methodological instrument. However, models emphasizing the influence of individuals’ social networks in shaping their electoral choices have been also present in the literature from the very beginning.
Edward Otto Laumann is an American sociologist. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Laumann earned his Ph.D. in the Harvard Department of Social Relations in 1964, where he worked with George Homans, Talcott Parsons, and Harrison White. He served as Dean of the social sciences and Provost at Chicago. He is best known for his work on social stratification, urban sociology, organizational sociology, health and aging, and is widely recognized as a pioneer in the areas of social network analysis and the sociology of sexuality. In 2013, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In social sciences, sequence analysis (SA) is concerned with the analysis of sets of categorical sequences that typically describe longitudinal data. Analyzed sequences are encoded representations of, for example, individual life trajectories such as family formation, school to work transitions, working careers, but they may also describe daily or weekly time use or represent the evolution of observed or self-reported health, of political behaviors, or the development stages of organizations. Such sequences are chronologically ordered unlike words or DNA sequences for example.
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Joseph Galaskiewicz is an American sociologist and Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona, known for his work on interorganizational relations and social network analysis.
Linda Joan Waite is a sociologist and social demographer. She is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Waite is also a Senior Fellow at the NORC at the University of Chicago and Principal Investigator on the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP). In 2018, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Erin York Cornwell is an American sociologist. She is associate professor of sociology at Cornell University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2008, where she worked with Linda Waite, Edward Laumann, and Kathleen Cagney. She specializes in survey research methods, and has made numerous contributions to sociology of law, urban sociology, and the sociology of health.
Peter Marsden is an American sociologist. He is the Edith and Benjamin Geisinger Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.