About

I am a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the University of Essex, where I share my time between the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER). At ISER, I am a member of the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change (MiSoC). I also hold a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers at the Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research, awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Previously, I worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Social Networks Lab at ETH Zürich between 2015 and 2021. From 2017, I was Principal Investigator of the project “Who Succeeds and Who Fails? A Multilevel Social Network Analysis Approach to Immigrants’ Psychological and Sociocultural Adaption in Europe” (Computational Social Science Grant, awarded by the Volkswagen foundation). Between 2015 and 2017, I served as a project manager for the Swiss StudentLife Study administered at ETH. I received my PhD from the Department of Sociology and Nuffield College at the University of Oxford in 2016. My supervisors were Tom Snijders and Janne Jonsson.

My work aims at understanding social inequalities along immigrant background, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and gender. I study how social processes in the education system reinforce or counteract systematic differences between groups of students. Much of my work applies state-of-art dynamic social network models.

News

Guest blog post for Nature: Testing a small and early intervention: The serendipity of friendships in students’ social networks
Featured in ETH news again: Giving chance a helping hand
New paper featured in Hungarian media: A barátok segítenek átmenni a szigorlaton (in Hungarian)
New paper in ETH news: The value of friendships in academic success

Publications

Book chapters

Boda, Z. (2021): “Where does ethnic segregation start? Interethnic differences in friendship, positive affection, and time spent together.” In: T. Altmann (ed.) Friendship in Cultural and Personality Psychology: International Perspectives, 395-407. Nova Science Publishers

Journal articles

Boda, Z., Lorenz, G., Jansen, M., Stanat, P., Edele, A. (2021): “Ethnic diversity fosters the social integration of refugee students.” ResearchSquare

Jansen, M., Boda, Z., Lorenz, G. (2021): “Social comparison effects on academic self-concepts: Which peers matter most?” PsyArXiv

Lorenz, G., Salikutluk, Z., Boda, Z., Jansen, M., Hewstone, M. (2021): “The interplay between social and structural integration: Co-evolution of friendship and educational expectations among Turkish minority adolescents in Germany.” Sociological Science, 8, 371-396

Lorenz, G., Boda, Z., Salikutluk, Z. (2021): “Oppositional culture revisited. Friendship dynamics and the creation of social capital among Turkish minority adolescents in Germany” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Vörös, A., Boda, Z., Elmer, T., Hoffman, M., Mepham, K., Raabe, I. J., Stadtfeld, C. (2021): “The Swiss StudentLife Study: Investigating the emergence of an undergraduate community through dynamic, multidimensional social network data” Social Networks 65, 71-84

Boda, Z., Néray, B., Snijders, T.A.B. (2020): “The dynamics of interethnic friendships and dislike: The role of ethnic categorizations” Social Psychology Quarterly 83 (4), 342-362

Boda, Z., Elmer, T., Vörös, A., Stadtfeld, C. (2020): “Short-term and long-term effects of a social network intervention on friendships among university students” Scientific Reports, 10 (1), 1-12

Lorenz, G., Boda, Z., Salikutluk, Z., Jansen, M. (2020): “Social influence or social selection? Peer effects on the development of educational expectations among adolescents in Germany” British Journal of Sociology of Education 41 (5), 643-669

Ortega, L., Boda, Z., Treviño, E., Arriagada, V., Gelber, D., del Rosario Escribano Alisio, M. (2020): “The centrality of immigrant students within teacher-student interaction networks: A relational approach to educational inclusion.” Teaching and Teacher Education, 95, 103126

Ortega, L., Boda, Z., Thompson, I., Daniels, H. (2020): “Understanding the structure of school staff advice relations for supporting vulnerable students: A Social Network Perspective” International Journal for Educational Research, 99, 101517

Kisfalusi, D., Pál, J., and Boda, Z. (2020): “Bullying and victimization among majority and minority students: The role of peers’ ethnic perceptions” Social Networks, 60, 48-60

Boda, Z. (2019): “Friendship bias in ethnic categorization”. European Sociological Review, 35 (4), 567-581

Raabe, I., Boda, Z., Stadtfeld, C. (2019): “The social pipeline: How friend influence and peer exposure widen the STEM gender gap” Sociology of Education, 92 (2), 104-123

Stadtfeld, C., Vörös, A., Elmer, T., Boda, Z., Raabe, I. (2019): “Integration in emerging social networks explain academic failure and success.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 116 (3), 792-797

Vörös, A., Block, P., Boda, Z. (2019): “Limits to inferring status from friendship relations” Social Networks, 59, 77-79

Boda, Z. (2018): “Social influence on observed race” Sociological Science, 5, 29-57

Elmer, T., Boda, Z., and Stadtfeld, C. (2017): “The co-evolution of emotional well-being with weak and strong friendship ties” Network Science, 5 (3), 278-307

Boda, Z. and Néray, B. (2015): “Inter-ethnic friendships and negative ties in secondary school.” Social Networks 43, 57-72.

Doctoral thesis

Boda, Z. (2016): “Friendship based on race or race based on friendship? The co-evolution of friendships, negative ties and ethnic perceptions in Hungarian schools.” University of Oxford

Other published work

Ripley, R. M., Snijders, T.A.B., Boda, Z, Vörös, A, and Preciado, P. (2021): Manual for RSiena. Technical report, Oxford: University of Oxford, Department of Statistics