Who Talks to Whom? Segregation in Informal Interactions at Academic Conferences

• In Event: New Frontiers in Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Research

Abstract

Informal workplace networks—who interacts with whom, who shares information with whom, who mentors whom, who influences whom—constitute the fundamental mechanisms through which social closure operates, opportunities are hoarded, and group-based socioeconomic inequalities are reproduced. Yet real-time, large-sample data on such interactions are notoriously scarce, largely because private workspaces are, by definition, private. As a result, the dynamics of informal network segregation—despite their central theoretical importance—remain insufficiently examined in contemporary research. Occasionally, however, informal workplace connections become visible in public settings—most notably among academics. Academic conferences are key sites for forming and reinforcing the professional networks that shape scholarly careers. This study assembles a novel image dataset of 7,500 photographs capturing real-life informal interactions at major academic conferences across a wide range of disciplines in order to examine segregation within these spontaneous interaction groups. Our findings challenge the notion that conferences are spaces where scholars simply “mingle by chance.” Across conferences, informal interactions are strongly segregated along racial, gender, and age lines. The level of racial segregation observed in these face-to-face encounters substantially exceeds that found in more stable and institutionalized contexts such as residential neighborhoods, workplaces, or schools. Strikingly, it approaches the magnitude of segregation documented in academic coauthorship networks.

Authors

• Siwei Cheng, New York University

• Wenhao Jiang, Duke University