Oxford Internet Institute

Cohen is a Research Fellow and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and a Research Fellow at Nuffield College. He is a sociologist specialising in the quantitative study of human social networks.

Cohen is currently investigating cross-cultural variation in the relative importance of oft-discussed mechanisms of tie formation (e.g., reciprocity vs. transitivity vs. homophily) using a unique assemblage of datasets documenting virtually complete face-to-face friendship networks from five rural communities in India, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Nicaragua. Theoretically, this research heavily draws on arguments around the cultural and ecological determinants of social behaviour.

Cohen received his PhD in Social Research Methods (Applied Social Statistics) from the London School of Economics & Political Science (Department of Methodology) and before joining the LSE he completed a MSc in Social Science of the Internet here at the OII as a Clarendon Scholar. Prior to joining the OII’s faculty, he was a post-doc in the Department of Sociology here at Oxford and the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge.

Research interests

Social Networks; Culture & Ecology; Rural Communities; Mathematical Sociology

Positions held at the OII

• Research Fellow, January 2018 –
• British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, January 2018 – January 2021
• MSc student, October 2011 – September 2012