Laura Fürsich
PhD candidate

I am a PhD candidate at the Institute for Analytical Sociology in Linköping University, Sweden. I have a background in economics and sociology from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. Before starting my PhD project, I have held positions at the WZB in Berlin and UC3JM in Madrid.
My research primarily concerns the link between social network ties and segregation. In particular, I investigate how the urban environment shapes the formation of network ties and how the emerging spatial distribution of network ties matters for patterns and perpatuation of residential segregation. In my projects, I use population level Swedish micro-data and apply a mix of advanced matching algorithms, discrete choice models, agent-based models, and counterfactual simulations.
Research Interest
Segregation – Social Networks – Social Infrastructure – Administrative Data – Agent-Based Modelling – Complexity
News
December 2022 – I am excited to join colleagues from Linköping University on the editorial board of Sociologisk Forskning. We’re getting started in January 2023!
October 2022 – I am spending three weeks at NYU Abu Dhabi to work with Sarah Valdez and Sabino Kornrich on several papers investigating group formation across ethnic and socio-economic boundaries.
June 2022 – I will spend some time this summer at the Santa Fe Institute to attend the Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science. I received the travel grant from the Department of Management and Engeneering @ Linköping University to fund attendance.
May 2022 – I will be attening the Annual Meeting of the Network of Analytical Sociology (INAS) in Florence and present joint work with Sarah Valdez on Social Infrastrucute.

Other Materials
Replication Study
I replicated Reardon et al. 2008 using the SEG package in R. You can find the repository here.
Projects at Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science at Santa Fe Insitute in 2022
Here’s a list of all the fun projects we worked on during our time in Santa Fe.
Teaching
I am teaching in the Master’s programm in Computational Social Science at LiU in the following courses:
- Agent-Based Modeling
- Segregation and Inequality
- Behavioral Mechanisms in the Social Sciences

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