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Professor of Analytical Sociology
About
I am Professor of Analytical Sociology and Director of the Excellence Center for Analytical Sociology at Linköping University.
My academic interests center on the dynamic interplay between micro behavior and macro outcomes, and the role that social interactions and social networks play in such processes. The philosophy and methodology of the social sciences is another core area of interest, and I have been one of the driving forces behind the development of analytical sociology.
During the last decade, much of my empirical research has focused on the role of social interactions in explaining various types of segregation processes. This research has been funded by grants from the European Research Council, the Swedish Research Council, and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.
I received my PhD in Sociology at Harvard University. Before joining Linköping University, I have held professorial positions at the University of Chicago, Stockholm University, University of Oxford, Singapore Management University, and NYU Abu Dhabi.
Over the years I have had various leadership roles such as Director of the Institute for Analytical Sociology, Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Singapore Management University, President of the International Network of Analytical Sociology, and Chair of the Sociology Group at Nuffield College.
I am a fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Academia Europaea, and the European Academy of Sociology.
Research
Over 50 peer-reviewed papers, books, and conference contributions.
Courses in Machine Learning, Data Science, and Ethics of Technology.
Analytical Sociology
Exploring responsible AI and data ethics in interdisciplinary contexts.
Recent Publications
In my recent work I continue exploring different kinds of social processes using both analytical and computational approaches. The publications below reflect my interest in social interactions, segregation processes, and network dynamics, and the importance I attach to tightly linking theoretical and empirical work to one another.
Arvidsson, M., Hedström, P. & Keuschnigg, M. (2025). "Wide social influence and the emergence of the unexpected: An empirical test using Spotify data". Sociological Science.
Social-influence processes not only affect the rate at which behaviors spread but can also decouple adoption behavior from individual preferences, and thereby bring about unexpected collective outcomes that cannot be predicted on the basis of the initial likes and dislikes of the individuals involved. However, the conditions under which social influence can lead to such decoupling are not well understood. We identify a social-influence mechanism that widens individuals’ behavioral repertoires and breaks the link between individuals’ initial preferences and the collective outcomes they jointly bring about. We test the micro-level assumptions of the mechanism in the context of cultural choices on Spotify, combining topic modeling with traditional statistical matching to estimate peer-to-peer influence effects from digital trace data. We then use agent-based simulations to examine the macro-level consequences of “wide” social influence and its importance for explaining cultural change.
Mutgan, S., Hedström, P. & Arvidsson, M. (2025). "Ethnic preferences, opportunity structure, and the school segregation process". European Sociological Review.
Previous research has shown that parents often have strong ethnicity-related school preferences, and it has been suggested that these preferences are consequential for the ethnic segregation of schools. In this article, we study all students enrolled in compulsory schooling in the Stockholm region during the years 2008 to 2017. Using a combination of statistical analyses of school choices and large-scale, empirically calibrated simulations, we investigate how preferences and opportunities jointly influence the students’ mobility between schools and the school segregation that their mobility or lack thereof gave rise to. Our main finding is that opportunities generally outweigh preferences. While ethnicity-related school preferences exist, they have little impact on ethnic segregation because the schools that students move between tend to have similar ethnic compositions.
Arvidsson, M., Hedström, P., Jarvis, B., & Keuschnigg, M. (2023). "On the intersection of analytical sociology and computational social science". In T. Yasseri (ed.) Handbook of Computational Science. Edward Elgar 2026.
Analytical Sociology (AS) is a branch of sociology concerned with mechanism-based explanations of collective outcomes and their dynamics—eg, segregation, inequality, and the diffusion of innovation. According to AS, a proper explanation must identify the social processes through which the collective outcomes to be explained are brought about. This typically requires explicit reference to the micro-level entities—individuals, families, firms, etc.—who are involved in the process, the activities they engage in, and the nature of the interdependencies that exist between them. The latter point deserves emphasis: Interdependence is a key feature of social systems that can have huge consequences for macro-level outcomes. When such interdependencies are at hand it is essential that explanations of macro-level outcomes detail how the interdependent activities bring about the collective outcome to be explained.
Arvidsson, M., Collet, F,. & Hedström, P. (2021). "The Trojan-horse mechanism: How networks reduce gender segregation." Science Advances, 7(16).
The segregation of labor markets along ethnic and gender lines is socially highly consequential, and the social science literature has long viewed homophily and network-based job recruitments as some of its most crucial drivers. Here, we focus on a previously unidentified mechanism, the Trojan-horse mechanism, which, in contradiction to the main tenet of previous research, suggests that network-based recruitment reduce rather than increase segregation levels. We identify the conditions under which networks are desegregating, and using unique data on all individuals and all workplaces located in the Stockholm region during the years 2000–2017, we find strong empirical evidence for the Trojan-horse mechanism and its role in the gender segregation of labor markets.
Current Research
More than twenty-five years now have passed since the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences conference on social mechanisms that according to many marked the beginning of analytical sociology as we perceive it today (see Hedström & Swedberg Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory). Since then, the social sciences have developed considerably, methodologically, theoretically as well as empirically. We now have access to analytical tools that allow us to better understand how large-scale social outcomes are brought about, as well as new types of data and data-analytical techniques that allow us to tightly link theoretical and empirical work to one another. Jointly these developments means that we now can analyse and explain large-scale social processes with a level of precision and empirical fidelity that was unthinkable for previous generations of social scientists.
I am currently working on a theoretically oriented monograph that in part builds and reflects upon these developments. The preliminary title of the book is Reconstructing the Social: Relational Microstructures and Mechanisms in Analytical Sociology. It will be published by Cambridge University Press in late 2026 or 2027.
Contact information:
peter.hedstrom@liu.se
Linköping University
Institute for Analytical Sociology
601 74 Norrköping
SWEDEN
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