Cohen Simpson worked with the OII from 2018 to 2020 as a Research Fellow and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. He was also a Research Fellow at Nuffield College. In 2020 he joined the London School of Economics as a Fellow in Quantitative Research Methods.
His research focuses on the formation of human social networks and he had a particular interest in socioecology and the relative importance of generative mechanisms (e.g., reciprocity versus transitivity).
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.
Network Formation; Socioecology & Choice of Social Contacts; Rural Populations.
Using data on face-to-face friendship between adult residents of dozens of rural villages in China, this project investigates whether the expression of mechanisms of network formation (e.g., reciprocity and transitivity) varies across environments.
My research is currently funded by the British Academy.
