SSRC

Barry Wellman has spent his career studying how social networks develop, are maintained, and connect communities and workgroups. He is analyzing the interplay between computer networks and social networks, focusing on computer-supported work and virtual community. He is undertaking a long-term study of network-based personal communities in Toronto. He is studying the ways in which people use network connections to gain resources, and the implications of these networks for large-scale social organization.

Wellman received his Honors Bachelor's degree in History from Lafayette College where he captained the college's undefeated College Bowl team. At Harvard University, he obtained his Master's degree in Social Relations and his Doctorate in Sociology. He joined the faculty at U of T in 1967 and has a cross-appointment to the Faculty of Information Studies. Wellman is affiliated with several research centres within the University of Toronto. His research is based at the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, where he directs the Virtually Social Research Network.

Wellman has edited Networks in the Global Village and co-edited Social Structures: A Network Approach. He has another book in progress, and has contributed more than 50 articles to other volumes. He has written more than 110 articles for journals.

The interdisciplinary nature of Wellman's research has led to his working with researchers from many different areas of expertise, including communication scientists, computer scientists, historians, information scientists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and statisticians. He has published widely outside of sociology, including the Canadian Journal of Public Health, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, the Communications of the Association for Communication Machinery, IEEE Artificial Intelligence, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science, the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. He has appeared in television documentaries about the changing nature of community, and he acted in What If?, a documentary feature about the life and thought of science-fiction author Judith Merril.

In 1976, Wellman founded the International Network for Social Network Analysis. He headed this interdisciplinary body until 1988, and also published and edited its Connections journal. He continues to serve as this scholarly network's International Coordinator and Executive Committee member. Wellman also founded the Structural Analysis Program at the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, and led it from 1979 until 1983. He is a principal founder of a new journal, City and Community, whose first issue is scheduled to appear in 2001. He also serves on the editorial boards of many other journals.

Wellman has given workshops or keynote addresses on social network analysis in a dozen countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Urban Sociology, Social Network Analysis, Technology and Society, Urban Studies, Research Methods, Social Psychology, and Ethnic/Race Relations.

In 1990, the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto established in his honour the Barry Wellman Award for the year's best undergraduate research paper. Wellman was elected in 1994 to the Sociological Research Association, an American honour society that rarely selects Canadians. He received the International Network for Personal Relationships' Mentoring Award in 1998, and he was the second place winner of the International Society for Personal Relationships' Outstanding Teaching Award. He has won several Dean's Excellence Awards from the University of Toronto.

Wellman is also an active member of the American Sociological Association, where he chairs the Electronic Publications committee, and is the Chair of its Community and Urban Sociology Section. Wellman is also a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, the Information Highway Working Group, the International Network for Social Network Analysis, and the International Communications Association.