III Chilean Social Network Conference 2027

Keynote Speaker (International)

Michelle Barnes, University of Sydney.

Michele is the Director of the Social Dynamics and Environmental Change Lab and an Associate Professor in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney. She is a social network scientist whose work draws on theories and methods from sociology and complex systems science to contribute a better understanding of the relational, social structural foundations of resilience in the context of climate change and other environmental risks. With a strong focus on climate adaptation and marine and coastal systems, her lab’s research explores key issues such as: how social networks scale-up to influence just and sustainable outcomes, how knowledge and practices about climate and the environment spread through society, and how feedbacks between people and nature influence adaptive behaviour and the trajectory of coupled human-natural systems over time.

Michele is a mixed-heritage descendant of the Rumsen Ohlone people and a member of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation. She grew up in California exploring her ancestral lands with her three sisters along the Monterey Bay coastline, and she has always felt a deep connection to the ocean and a commitment to supporting the communities who value and depend on it. She undertook her postgraduate studies at the University of Hawaii in an interdisciplinary department focused on environmental problem solving. Her PhD dissertation blended social network science, sociology, economics, and environmental science to shed light on the social behaviour of resource users in a complex ‘social-ecological system’ – an interdependent, relational system comprised of both people and nature. After obtaining her PhD in 2015, Michele was awarded a U.S. National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to develop and apply an integrative social-ecological network modelling framework to capture complex linkages between people and nature (2015 – 2018; ~AUD $208,500). She executed this project as a visiting fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Australia. In 2018, Michele was awarded an early career research fellowship (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council to study how social networks and power shape adaptive and transformative responses to climate change (2019 – 2022; AUD $370,000). Her research on social networks and the environment has been recognised by the Paul Bourke Award from the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (2021) and the INSNA Freeman Award (2023).

Keynote Speaker (International)

Isidro Maya Jariego, Universidad de Sevilla.

Doctor en Psicología. Catedrático de Universidad, Departamento de Psicología Social. Investigador Principal del Laboratorio de Redes Personales y Comunidades (HUM-059). Editor de REDES. Revista Hispana para el Análisis de Redes Sociales (2002-Actualidad). Coordinador del Máster en Psicología de la Intervención Social y Comunitaria (2010-2013). Coordinador del programa de doctorado “Intervención Social con la Comunidad” (2007-2013). Investigador principal de proyecto Erasmus+ de la Unión Europea; ha participado en proyectos del plan estatal de I+D+i (España), de COLCIENCIAS (Colombia), FONDECYT (Chile) y CONACYT (México), entre otros.

His research focuses on the analysis of social networks and the psychology of social and community intervention. It involves the comparison and classification of personal network samples, incorporating methodological innovations in mixed-methods social network research. Additionally, he examine sense of community across different contexts and assess the impact of empowerment processes on improving the implementation and effectiveness of intervention programs.

Keynote Speaker (National)

César A. Hidalgo, Toulouse School of Economics' (TSE).

César A. Hidalgo is a Chilean-Spanish-American scholar known for his contributions to economic complexity and for his applied work on data visualization and artificial intelligence. Hidalgo is a tenured professor at the Toulouse School of Economics’ (TSE) Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the head of the Center for Collective Learning a multidisciplinary research laboratory with offices at Institute for Advanced Study (IAST) at TSE and the Corvinus Institute of Advanced Studies (CIAS) at Corvinus University of Budapest. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Alliance Manchester Business School of the University of Manchester.

Between 2010 and 2019 Hidalgo led MIT’s Collective Learning group and prior to that he was a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Hidalgo is also a founder of Datawheel, an award winning company specialized in public data distribution and economic development strategy. He holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Notre Dame and a Bachelor in Physics from Universidad Católica de Chile.

Hidalgo’s contributions have been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2018 Lagrange Prize and three Webby Awards. Hidalgo's has authored dozens of peer-reviewed papers and of four books: Why Information Grows (Basic Books, 2015),  The Atlas of Economic Complexity (MIT Press, 2014), and How Humans Judge Machines (MIT Press, 2021). His latest book, The Infinite Alphabet (Penguin-Random House, 2025) was published in November of 2025.