Dr. Ronald Breiger is a Regents Professor Emeritus in the School of Sociology at the University of Arizona, and is affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Program in Applied Mathematics, the Interdisciplinary Program in Statistics & Data Science, and the School of Government and Public Policy. Click here for his profile at the University of Arizona.

Breiger (PhD Harvard, 1975) was a faculty member at  Harvard University (Assistant to Associate Professor) and Cornell University (Professor to Goldwin Smith Professor of Sociology) before joining the University of Arizona faculty in 2000. He was appointed a Regents Professor in 2016, and Regents Professor Emeritus of Sociology when he retired in May 2024.

Breiger’s interests include social networks, networks and culture, adversarial networks, stratification, mathematical models, theory, and measurement issues in cultural and institutional analysis.

Named a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a Fulbright Senior Scholar, Breiger is a recipient of the Simmel Award of the International Network for Social Network Analysis. He has also been recognized by receiving the James S. Coleman Distinguished Career Achievement Award of the American Sociological Association (ASA) Section on Mathematical Sociology and the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award of the ASA Section on Methodology, the latter given for a career of outstanding contributions to sociological methodology.  In 2022 Ronald Burt, Harrison White, and Dr. Breiger were named the inaugural recipients of the Progress in Mathematical Sociology Award of the ASA Section on Mathematical Sociology in recognition of their work on the concept of “structural equivalence,” which has had transformative, expansive, and lasting impact on the field. In 2024 Breiger was again the recipient of the Progress in Mathematical Sociology Award, this time honoring his work on duality, a concept that has enriched a wide range of topics and theoretical developments.

With Linton Freeman, Breiger has served as Editor of the journal Social Networks (1998-2006), and he was Editor for Social and Political Science of the journal Network Science (2016-19). He currently serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Cultural Sociology and the journal Poetics. Breiger chaired a 2002 National Academy of Sciences workshop on dynamic social network modeling and analysis, which focused on contributions of that area to national needs with a particular focus on national security. Links to selected publications, grants, and affiliations are provided at the left of this page.