Gianluca MANZO

Professeur des Universités

Professor of Sociology, Sorbonne Université
Fellow, European Academy of Sociology
Editor, L’Année Sociologique
President, RC45 (Rational Choice), International Sociological Association

See Full CV (French) (English)
See Google Scholar Profile

Bio

Before joining the department of sociology of Sorbonne University as professor in September 2021, I was a research fellow in sociology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) from October 2007 to August 2021 as a member of the GEMASS (Groupe d’Etude des Méthodes de l’Analyse Sociologique de la Sorbonne), a research unit for which I served as deputy director between 2018 and 2019, where I still lead the research axis “Mechanisms, Networks, and Inequality”.

I earned a B.A. in Sociology (2001) and a Ph.D in Epistemology and Methodology of Social Sciences (2006) from the University of Trento (Italy), as well as a M.Phil in Social Sciences and Philosophy of Knowledge (2002) and a Ph.D in Social Sciences (2006) from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. I obtained the “Habilitation à diriger des recherché” (HDR) in Social Sciences in July 2019 at Sorbonne University.

I held visiting positions and/or taught at the University of Oxford (Nuffield College) (2009 & 2010), University of Oslo (2010), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2010), University of Roma-La Sapienza (2011), Columbia University (2012), University of Mannheim (2013), Instituto de Filosofía y Ciencias de la Complejidad (Santiago of Chile) (2013), University of Cologne (2014), European University Institute (2015 & 2021), and University of Trento (2019). In France, I taught as an external faculty at Sorbonne University between 2006 and 2020, at EHESS (in collaboration with Ivan Ermakoff) from 2016 to 2018, and at Science Po (Saint-Germain-en-Laye) in 2023 and 2024; since 2018, I teach on a regular basis at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi (SUAD). From 2011 to 2014, I also was an “international research affiliate” at the Institute for Futures Studies (Stockholm), and, from 2014 to 2021, at the Institute for Analytical Sociology (IAS) at Linköping University.

I am the author (in French) of La spirale des inégalités (PUPS, 2009), and of Agent-based Models and Causal Inference (Wiley & Sons, 2022); I am also the editor of Analytical Sociology: Actions and Networks (Wiley, 2014), and of the Research Handbook on Analytical sociology (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021). My work has appeared in several internationally well-established sociological journals including Sociological Methods and Research, European Sociological Review, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, European Journal of Sociology, Quality and Quantity, Comparative Social Research, and Revue Française de Sociologie. I also published in interdisciplinary journals, like Social Science Information, and outside sociology, my research appeared in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory and the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation.

My article « Educational Choices and Social Interactions: A Formal Model and a Computational Test » published in Comparative Social Research (2013) received in 2014 the Mathematical Sociology Outstanding Article Award by the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. My article « Analytical sociology and Its Critics » published in European Journal of Sociology (2010) was awarded in 2012 a “special mention of the jury” (“Best Junior Theorist Paper”) by the Sociological Theory Research Committee of the International Sociological Association.

At Sorbonne University, I am the director of the Master program in Sociology since 2022 as well as the deputy director (for sociology) of the doctoral school “Concepts and Languages” (ED433); from 2012 to 2016, and again from 2021 to 2025, I was a member of the scientific committee for sociology and law (section 36) of the CNRS.
I served as vice-president of the International Network of Analytical sociology (INAS) from June 2011 to June 2018, as well as as chair-elect, chair, and past-chair of the section “Decision-making, Networks, and Society” of the American Sociological Association in 2021, 2022, and 2003 respectively; since July 2023, I am the president of the RC45 (Rational choice) of the International Sociological Association. In October 2021, I was elected as a fellow of the European Academy of Sociology; since 2024, I serve as the Academy’s secretary.

I seated on the board of Sociological Theory (2010-2014) and Social Science Information (2014-2017); since 2023, I am part of the editorial board of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation; since January 2023, I am the editor of L’Année Sociologique.

A full list of my activities falling in the various chapters that characterize the typical life of an academic can be found in my CV (please see the link above). The present page rather selects, and, in some cases, comments on aspects of my trajectory and activities with the aim to help curious students and colleagues better to understand the kind of sociologist I think I am.

I hope you will enjoy the content! Please do not hesitate to contact me with feedback.

Research style

Generally speaking, I am interested in how social interactions surrounding actors shape their beliefs, choices and strategies. I am not interested in actors and social interactions per se, however. My real focus is the macroscopic consequences of actors’ embeddedness in social interactions. It is the dynamic of the micro-to-macro link mediated by social networks that fascinates me.

From this perspective, I inquired various social phenomena like educational inequality, relative deprivation, status hierarchies, technological innovations, and viruses by always asking the same question: how do the features, and the structures, of the social interactions in which actors behave drive the emergence of the observed macroscopic distribution (and/or its temporal changes, and/or its variation across social groups) of the actor-level outcome at hand, this outcomes having in turn been “choosing a given educational path”, “being satisfied or dissatisfied”, “being deferent or snobbish”, “adopting a given novelty”, or “getting contaminated”.

In each of these pieces of work, to answer the question, I designed a theoretical model guessing on the mechanisms linking social interactions to actors’ behaviors. Inputs for the model construction came from previous models, and, when available, from individual-level and social network data. I employed agent-based computational simulations as a tool to generate the model’s quantified theoretical implications, and statistical analysis both to analyze the inner functioning of the simulation and to compare its outcomes with real-world data describing the macroscopic regularities of interest to be explained.

I like to devote part of my time also to reflect upon the research style that informs my work. This led me to raise questions about the notion of mechanism, and the development of the perspective labeled “analytical sociology”; about the virtues and limitations of rational action theories in sociology; and, about the premises of agent-based computational models, and the connection between this tool and more traditional approaches to causal reasoning.

Selected works

The full list of my publications can be found in my CV (see the link above). For those who like bibliometrics, Google scholar (among other devices) will tell you which of my pieces of work others (seem to) like (or think they may/should like without reading because others seemed to have liked those pieces before them).

Below I suggest instead a selection of papers that I do like; I think they illustrate well my trajectory as well as my research style, topics and methods. I organized the selection by following the order of the short presentation above: first, substantive works (1. Models of Mechanisms), than meta-theoretical works (2. Analytical Sociology; 3. Rational Action Theory; 4. Agent-based computational models).

Should you have hard time to get any of the following pieces, please feel free to contact me.

1. Models of Mechanisms

G. Manzo (2009). “Boudon’s Model of Relative Deprivation Revisited”, in M. Cherkaoui & P. Hamilton (eds.) Raymond Boudon: A Life in Sociology, Oxford, Bardwell Press, vol. 3, part 3, ch. 46, 91-121.
G. Manzo (2011). “Relative Deprivation in Silico: Agent-based Models and Causality in Analytical Sociology”, in P. Demeulenaere (ed.), Analytical Sociology and Social Mechanisms, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ch. 13, 266-308.
G. Manzo (2013). “Educational Choices and Social Interactions: A Formal Model and A Computational Test”, Comparative Social Research, 30, 47-100.
G. Manzo, D. Baldassarri (2015). “Heuristics, Interactions, and Status Hierarchies: An Agent-based Model of Deference Exchange”, Sociological Methods and Research, 44, 3, 329-387.
G. Manzo, S. Gabbriellini, V. Roux, F. Nkirote M’Mbogorihttp (2018). “Complex Contagions and the Diffusion of Innovations: Evidence from a Small-N Study”, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 25, 4, 1109-1154
G. Manzo, A. van de Rjit (2020) “Halting SARS-CoV-2 by Targeting High-contact Individuals”, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 23, 4 (10), <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/23/4/10.html> (DOI: 10.18564/jasss.4435).

2. Analytical Sociology

G. Manzo (2007) “Comment on Andrew Abbott/2”, Sociologica, 2/2007 (doi: 10.2383/24752)
G. Manzo (2010). “Analytical Sociology and Its Critics”, European Journal of Sociology, 51, 1, 129-170.
G. Manzo (2014). “Data, Generative Models, and Mechanisms: More on the Principles of Analytical Sociology”. In Manzo, G. (2014) (ed.) Analytical Sociology: Actions and Networks, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 4-52.
G. Manzo (2021). “Does analytical sociology practice what it preaches? An assessment of analytical sociology through the Merton award”, in G. Manzo (ed.) Research Handbook on Analytical Sociology, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar (Research Handbooks in Sociology Series), pp. 1-47.
G. Manzo (2024), “Antecedents of generative thinking in analytical sociology: the contribution of Tom Fararo”. The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022250X.2024.2423946.

3. Rational Action Theory

G. Manzo (2012). “Full and Sketched Micro-Foundations. The Odd Resurgence of a Dubious Distinction”, Sociologica, 1/2012 (doi: 10.2383/36900)
G. Manzo (2012). “Reason-based Explanations and Analytical Sociology. A Rejoinder to Boudon”, European Journal of Social Sciences, 50, 2, 35-65
G. Manzo (2013). “Is rational choice theory still a rational choice of theory?”, Social Science Information, 52, 3, 361-382
G. Manzo (2015). “Macrosociology-Microsociology”, In: James D. Wright (editor-in-chief), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, vol. 14. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 414-421.
G. Manzo (2019). “Gianluca Manzo interviewed by Wojtek Przepiorka”, Agora (Newsletter of the Rationality and Society Section of the American Sociological Association and the Research Committee 45 on Rational Choice of the International Sociological Association), Winter 2018/Spring 2019, 6-8.

4. Agent-based Computational Models

G. Manzo (2007) “Variables, mechanisms, and simulations: can the three methods be synthesized? A critical analysis of the literature”, Revue Française de Sociologie, 48, 35-71.
G. Manzo (2014). “Potentialities and Limitations of Agent-based Simulations: An introduction”, Revue Française de Sociologie, 55, 4, 653-688. https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-revue-francaise-de-sociologie-2014-4-page-653.htm)
G. Manzo (2020). “Agent-based models and methodological Individualism: are they fundamentally linked?”, L’Année Sociologique, 70, 1, 197-229.
G. Manzo (2022) Agent-based Models and Causal Inference, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons (Wiley Series in Computational and Quantitative Social Science).

(Very) early works

I gather here two papers that I still like very much! Both deal with the description of the structure and/or the temporal trends of educational inequality by socio-economic groups; both rely on methods that one may consider as not very common in the early 2000s.

1. Artificial Neural Networks

The paper summarizes the research dissertation (“tesi di laurea”) that I defended in September 2001 at the University of Trento to obtain my Bachelor in sociology; it studies Italian (and Swedish) large-scale survey data through artificial neural networks, in particular back-propagation multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs).

C. Corposanto, G. Manzo (2003) “Disuguaglianze educative e loro trasformazioni nel tempo: problemi tecnici e metodologici di un’analisi compiuta mediante reti neurali artificiali”, Sociologia e Ricerca sociale, XXIV, 70, 43-69.

2. Multi-matrices log-linear topological models

The paper was written during the earlier stages of my PhD dissertation when I was looking for “alternatives” to implement the notion of mechanisms as neatly as possible; it studies French large-scale survey data, and relies on multi-matrices log-linear topological models.

G. Manzo (2006). “Generative Mechanisms and Multivariate Statistical Analysis. Modeling Educational Opportunity Inequality by Multi-Matrix Log-Linear Topological Model: Contributions and Limits”, Quality & Quantity, 40, 5, 721-758.

The two papers had a different trajectory. The 2006 paper using multi-matrices log-linear topological models –a method that does not seem more frequently used now than it was twenty years ago or so – accumulated a small amount of (citational) visibility. In contrast, the 2003 paper using artificial neural networks –a technique that is everywhere nowadays– went entirely unnoticed! Sure: the paper was published in Italian, and in a confidential journal. Still: Given that, to the best of my knowledge, this seems one of the first papers in sociology using “deep learning” techniques to study a traditional, well-defined, empirical sociological phenomenon, I allow myself to give it some new digital visibility!

Teaching

Since my recruitment as professor at Sorbonne University in September 2021, the amount of time I devote to teaching has enormously increased. I list here the classes that I teach on a regular basis in the Bachelor and the Master of sociology at Sorbonne University (SU), and in the double Bachelor of Philosophy and Sociology and the Master in Applied Sociological Research at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi (SUAD). Please note that I constantly revise and adjust classes’ syllabi. The versions posted here thus must be considered as work-in-progress. Please do not hesitate to write to me if you have any questions and/or suggestions.

1. Bachelor SU

(3rd year) Social Stratification: Surveys (1.5 hours x 13 weeks) and models (2 hours x 13 weeks) on actors’ subjective perceptions of social structure.

Syllabus (in French): SU | SUAD

2. Master SU

(1st year) Sociology of social networks: Ego-centered and complete network research designs (1.5 hours x 13 weeks); Data import, visualization and analysis with R (2 hours x 13 weeks).

Syllabus (in English)

(1st year) Logic of Social Research: Fundamental notions to design a research project (2 hours x 13 weeks).

Syllabus (in French)

(2nd year) Computational Sociology: Designing and programming agent-based computational models with NetLogo (2 hours x 13 weeks).

Syllabus (in English)

4. Master SUAD

Networks and Society: History, principles and techniques for designing micro-macro models of social life focusing on social interactions (20 hours [4 hours x 5 days] per year)

(1st year) Syllabus (in English)
(2nd year) Syllabus (in English)

Call for Students

Master or PhD students who would like to work on topics and/or methods that do not fall within those covered by my classes (see the “Teaching” section), or that are outside my main areas of expertise (see the “Research style” section) are invited to contact me AS LONG AS they see sociology as a scientific activity oriented towards explaining clearly identified macroscopic facts on the basis of well-defined research designs allowing to identify mechanisms that explain how we can move from the micro to the macro-level of analysis (and vice-versa).

I appreciate students who reach me out with a specific research article in mind and/or specific questions to ask. Here are some resources that I advise students to glance at before approaching me for supervision:

Introduction to Sociology (2020)
Research Handbook on Analytical Sociology (2021)
Handbook of Sociological Science: Contributions to Rigorous Sociology (2022)

Students who see sociology as a political activity where facts and answers are known before doing research are invited to check the following book before approaching me for supervision:

Societal Problems as Public Bads (2019)

Contrary to what some students seem to believe, I am not “against” qualitative methods. I am skeptical instead towards students who hope to find in qualitative methods a strategy to escape rigorous reasoning, data collection and analysis. I invite students who may fall in that temptation to read the following book. Once this is done, I am ready to start a discussion about a possible supervision.

Qualitative Literacy (2022)