Welcome!
Hi, I am BK Lee, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at New York University, and a co-Director of the Networks in Context lab.
I study social cohesion and network dynamics, exploring their impacts on individual, community, and societal well-beings in the domains of health and politics. I am also interested in using large language models, surveys, and social media data to develop indicators of social cohesion and polarization, predict public opinion, and simulate AI agents for advancing social science research.
My research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institues of Health, Department of Defense Minerva and others. My work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Science Advances, JAMA Network Open and several other outlets.
I support open science: you can find my codes and data under Data and Code, or dataverse. If you are interested in my ongoing research, please visit Research. Here’s a link to my CV.
News
October 2024. I will work as Consulting Editor for the American Journal of Sociology for the next two years.
September 2024. I’m excited to work as co-PI on the five-year project “Social Cohesion in Action: How Collectivist and Interdependent Communities React to Adverse Events” (PI: Baldassarri), which is funded by the DOD Minerva Program.
August 2024. I had the honor of revising the 5th edition of a Korean textbook on social network analysis—the very book that sparked my own interest in the field. You can order the book here.
July 2024. My paper on the unemployment and suicide is accepted at American Sociological Review! You can download the working paper version here.
December 2023. My paper on the patterns of social networks during COVID-19 is published at Science Advances! Check this out!
Selected Publications
2024 “Misery Needs Company: Contextualizing the Geographic and Temporal Link Between Unemployment and Suicide.”, American Sociological Review, forthcoming Paper.
2023 “Transformation of social relationships in COVID-19 America: Remote communication may amplify political echo chambers.”, Science Advances 9(51):eadi1540 Paper, Code and data
2021 “Systematic Evaluation of State Policy Interventions Targeting the US Opioid Epidemic, 2007-2018.”, JAMA Network Open 4(2):e2036687 Paper, Code and data
2021 “Close Relationships in Close Elections”, Social Forces 100(1): 400-425. Paper, Code and data
2020 “The Role of Multilayered Peer Groups in Adolescent Depression: A Distributional Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 125(6): 1513-1558. Paper, Code and data
Contact
Email : bklee@nyu.edu