Skip to content

Biography

Ryan Light is a Professor of Sociology at the UO. His work has appeared in PNAS, Social Forces, Annual Review of Sociology, Social Networks, among numerous others. He also co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Social Networks. 

His current research focuses on the organization of science, including scientific movements, environmental social science, and interdisciplinarity, using social network analysis and computational social science methods. He also studies how culture and meaning are structured using network and text analysis. He has a longstanding interest in social network analysis and research methods as well as power and inequality.

He recently taught undergraduate courses on the social inequality, sociology of culture, sociology of science, and sociological theory. He also teaches graduate-level courses on research methods and social networks.
 

Professor Light received his B.A. in Sociology form Kenyon College, and his Ph.D. in Sociology from The Ohio State University. He joined the University of Oregon faculty as an Assistant Professor of Sociology in 2009.