11th BELGIAN NETWORK RESEARCH MEETING

11th BELGIAN NETWORK RESEARCH MEETING

The 11th edition of the Belgian Network Research Meeting (BENet) will be organised by the Complex Systems Institute from Ghent University on December 17, 2025. The purpose of this annual gathering is to foster communication among Belgian researchers employing network science on their work, regardless of their discipline: sociology, economics, communication, history, biology, physics, medicine, informatics, etc.

Important Dates


November 17, 2025: Submission of abstracts
November 27, 2025: Notification of acceptance
December 1, 2025: Registration deadline
December 17, 2025: Conference

Abstract Decisions

The decision on abstracts was sent today (November 27). If the corresponding author did not receive the email, contact the organiser.
Remember to register before the deadline. Inform us if you decide not to participate anymore.
Registrations are closed. Accepted participants should have received a confirmation email by the end of December 2, 2025.

Mailing List

To receive further information about this meeting and news about Belgian researchers working on networks, subscribe to this (low frequency) mailing list:
Send a blank email to "listserv@lists.ugent.be" with the subject "subscribe benet YourFirstName YourFamilyName"

Previous Editions


Contact Prof Luis Rocha for more information.

Organisers

  • Practical support: Sandy Van Laer and Ruixue Jing
  • The satellite is sponsored by the Research Foundation Flanders, Belgium, via the Belgium Research Network for Network Science (BENet).

    WebMaster: Luis Rocha. Updated: 15.12.2025

    Programme

    Programme schedule
    09:00 – 09:10 Opening (Luis Rocha, UGent)
    09:10 – 10:40 SESSION I Chair: Timoteo Carletti, UNamur
    09:10 – 09:25 Talk 1: (Niels Van Santen, UGent) Building probabilistic (hyper)graphs using information-theoretical measures.
    09:25 – 09:40 Talk 2: (Hao Gao, UGent) Higher-order phase relations in electrophysiological data.
    09:40 – 09:55 Talk 3: (Pietro Coletti, UCL) The impact of household physical distancing and its timing on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
    09:55 – 10:10 Talk 4: (Tim Van Wesemael, UGent) The role of neighbouring countries in the introduction of COVID-19 mitigation measures.
    10:10 – 10:25 Talk 5: (Maxime Lucas, UCL) Growth and structure of biological branching networks in space
    10:25 – 10:40 Talk 6: (Daniele Marinazzo, UGent) Partial Information Rate Decomposition.
    10:40 – 11:10 Coffee break
    11:10 – 12:40 SESSION II Chair: Bob Rink, VUA
    11:10 – 11:25 Talk 7: (Julie Birkholz, UGent) Decoding the Past: Information Extraction and Network Analysis in Historical Research.
    11:25 – 11:40 Talk 8: (Ko Sugiura, UGent) Econometric Evaluation of Industrial Policies in Macroeconomic Models of Sectoral Production Networks and Firm-Level Strategic Interactions.
    11:40 – 11:55 Talk 9: (Ruixue Jing, UGent) Optimising cryptocurrency portfolios through stable clustering of price correlation networks.
    11:55 – 12:10 Talk 10: (Tekilu Choramo, UGent) Trade Integration, Institutions, and Environmental Quality in Africa: Network-based approach.
    12:10 – 12:25 Talk 11: (Justine Miller, UGent) Modelling the Dynamics of Trade Agreement Formation: A Stochastic Actor-Oriented Approach.
    12:25 – 12:40 Talk 12: (Nivedha Elango, HAEDES) A Network-Based Complex Systems Model for Ecosystem Service Valuation (NESEV).
    12:40 – 13:40 Lunch break + Posters
    13:40 – 15:10 SESSION III Chair: Pietro Coletti, UCL
    13:40 – 13:55 Talk 13: (Seorin Kim, VUB) Exploring scientific progress using content-level knowledge graphs.
    13:55 – 14:10 Talk 14: (Vincent Holst, VUB) The Illusion of Decline: Unpacking Intrinsic Network Effects in Scientific Disruption.
    14:10 – 14:25 Talk 15: (Marcelo Ramírez-Ávila, UNamur) Scientometric Analysis: From Descriptive Statistics to Complex Networks Indicators
    14:25 – 14:40 Talk 16: (Juan C F Toledano, RMA) Detecting Coordinated Behaviour in Social Media Using Minimal Metadata.
    14:40 – 14:55 Talk 17: (Ruslan Klymentiev, UGent) Homophily promotes stable connections in co-offending networks but limits information diffusion: insights from a simulation study.
    14:55 – 15:10 Talk 18: (Jiaze Li, UMaastricht) Hypergraph Community Detection with Bethe Hessian.
    15:10 – 15:40 Coffee break
    15:40 – 17:10 SESSION IV Chair: Daniele Marinazzo, UGent
    15:40 – 15:55 Talk 19: (Margherita Bertè, VUA) Fibration Symmetries and Cluster Synchronizatio.
    15:55 – 16:10 Talk 20: (Martin Moriamé, UNamur) Higher-order interactions non-trivially affect the efficiency of the desynchronizing pairwise-based Hamiltonian control on the higher-order Kuramoto model
    16:10 – 16:25 Talk 21: (Stijn Van Vooren, VUB) Information flow as warning sign for phase transitions in Ising networks.
    16:25 – 16:40 Talk 22: (Marie Dorchain, UNamur) Pattern formation : the power of directionality in complex topologies.
    16:40 – 16:55 Talk 23: (Cédric Simal, UNamur) The shortest-path distance on graphons.
    16:55 – 17:10 Talk 24: (Jarod Ketcha, UNamur) Enhancing Machine Learning Performance via Interacting Multi-Agents.
    17:10 Closing
    17:30 – 19:00 Drinks at Kaffee de Planck

    Call for Abstracts

    We welcome the submission of short research abstracts. Authors of selected contributions will be invited to present and discuss their work during the meeting. Please take into account the interdisciplinary nature of this event: tutorial presentations will be favored over detailed reports. If you prefer a shorter (5 min) or longer (15 min) talk, specify your choice during the submission. We will try to accommodate all wishes.

    Submit here your title and abstract (text only, 180-200 words) by November 17, 2025.


    The scope of the meeting includes but is not restricted to:
    Social & organisational theory
    Economics & Finance
    Social media & online activities
    Human communication & mobility
    Information diffusion & opinion dynamics
    Political networks & collective action
    Ecology, ethology, food webs
    Biology & bioinformatics
    Epidemiology
    Physics, Mathematics & Statistics
    Modelling & Data Analysis
    Statistical networks & Bayesian networks
    Social network analysis
    Network visualisation
    Network criminology
    Networks and machine learning

    The book of abstracts with list of participants is available here.

    The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.

    Registration

    Registration is free and mandatory here. Register by December 1, 2025.

    Important Dates (duplicate for context)

    November 17, 2025: Submission of abstracts | November 27, 2025: Notification of acceptance | December 1, 2025: Registration deadline | December 17, 2025: Conference

    Location

    The annual meeting will take place at Zebrastraat 32, Gent. Open in Google Maps