Marie-Pierre Bès

Les réseaux personnels des doctorants dans des chaînes latentes : retour sur une recherche-action

Latent Chains of Ties in Doctoral Students’ Personal Networks - Revisiting an Action Research: This article is based on qualitative data collected through interviews and participant observation with doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences, who used social network analysis to identify their professional colleagues. We obtained a series of name generators by asking students to list those who help them in their work, those others who work with their supervisors, and those they would like to contact to make progress. The analysis of these personal networks reveals three types of “networks”, which depend on the student’s embeddeness in the academic world or in their research field and thus their relative lack of awareness of potential direct or indirect support by their supervisor. We highlight the importance of chains of latent ties that could be activated if the student was more aware of them.