Arnout van de Rijt

Arnout van de Rijt is a Full-time Professor and Head of Department in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy. He joined the EUI in September 2019 after serving as Professor of Sociology at Utrecht University (2016-2020) and Assistant and Associate Professor at Stony Brook University in the USA (until 2016).

Van de Rijt received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University in 2007. He is Editor-in-Chief of Sociological Science and serves on the editorial board of Social Networks. He is President of the International Network of Analytical Sociology (INAS) and an elected member of the European Academy of Sociology.

His research spans social network analysis, computational social science, collective action, and social stratification. He has made significant contributions to understanding rich-get-richer processes, Matthew effects, and cumulative advantage in social systems. His work combines mathematical sociology with empirical approaches to examine how social structures form and evolve.

Van de Rijt has published in prestigious journals including PNAS, American Sociological Review, and American Journal of Sociology. His recent work explores gender dynamics in fame acquisition, social preferences in economic games, trust in online markets, environmental behavior, and combatting misinformation through user rating systems.

• 2017 Raymond Boudon Award for early career achievement from the EAS
• 2010 Freeman Award from the International Network of Social Network Analysis
• 2009 Distinguished Publication Prize winner of the EAS
• Six best article awards from ASA, ISSI, and INAS

Van de Rijt supervises numerous PhD students working on topics related to cooperation, social inequality, and computational social science. He has co-founded and led the Center for Computational Social Science at Stony Brook University and regularly teaches seminars on quantitative methods, social networks, and computational social science. His research has received media coverage in Le Monde, L'Express, Bloomberg Opinion, Science, and Nature.