Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Tohoku University

My research field is mathematical sociology. This is a branch of social science that seeks to explicate mechanisms related to various social phenomena using quantitative methods. The goal is to explicate the mechanisms with regards to how social patterns such as friendship, like-dislike relations and dominance emerge thorough micro social acts and how these patterns in turn affects individual social behaviors by 1) constructing theoretical models through mathematical and computational methods or 2) analyzing a variety of data thorough statistical methods.

My concrete research subjects include social status hierarchy and social networks through occupational positions. Status hierarchy naturally occurs in small groups such as classes in school or gang groups. I construct a mathematical model to explain how it emerges. Concerning social networks thorough occupations, I develop a novel method to extract a structure of occupational field in Japan. That reveals a polarized form of networks through occupational position (See Figure 1).