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I am a sociologist interested in the theoretical, experimental, and empirical analysis of micro mechanisms of social networks in relation to problems of honest communication, cooperation, discrimination, social and political conflict.
I work as a Professor and Deputy Director at the Institute for Analytical Sociology (IAS), Linköping University (LiU), Sweden, and Research Professor at the Computational Social Science Research Group, ELTE Centre for Social Sciences in Budapest. I received my Master from the Corvinus University of Budapest, and my PhD from the University of Groningen / ICS (The Netherlands).
In the research project supported by the “Lendület” research excellence program of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, I investigated the mechanisms and dynamics of negative social relations and networks in interrelation with competition. I founded and directed RECENS (now the CSS Research Group at the Centre for Social Sciences) in Budapest.
I have been awarded with an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2014 on gossip, reputation, and cooperation. My current research projects and interests cover discrimination and its implications in grading assessment, peer strategies for counteracting political radicalization, and the construction and analysis of population-scale multilayer exposure networks.
Featured publications:
Vit, E., Bianchi, F., Castellani, M., & Takács, K. 2024. Friends Can Help to Aim High: Peer Influence and Selection Effects on Academic Ambitions and Achievement. Journal of Early Adolescence, https://doi.org/10.1177/02724316241273427
Kisfalusi, D., Janky, B., & Takács, K. 2021. Grading in Hungarian Primary Schools: Mechanisms of Ethnic Discrimination against Roma Students. European Sociological Review, 37(6), 899-917, jcab023, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab023
Takács, K. 2022. A Reputation-Centered Theory of Human Cooperation and Social Organization. Sociologica, 16(2): 11-51. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/14196 https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/14196
Vit, E., Bodor-Eranus, E.H., Janky, B., Szvetelszky, Zs., Lázár, B., and Takács, K. 2026. Social Networks and the Emergence of Informal Norms and Metanorms in Transient Working Groups. Rationality and Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/10434631261447106
News
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We examine the emergence of informal norms and metanorms among festival volunteers in a new article with Eszter Vit, Eliza Bodor-Eranus and others in Rationality and Society.
14 May, 2026
Our article with Márta Radó and others on social network mechanisms behind ethnic inequalities in smoking behavior has been published in the European Journal of Public Health.
5 January, 2026
Our paper on gender norms and conversations of couples with Júlia Galántai and Samu Flóra has been published in Discourse and Society.
9 November, 2025
The November issue of the Journal of Early Adolescence has been published as a Special Issue on Social Networks in Early Adolescence, edited by Dorottya Kisfalusi and me. Introduction to the Special Issue.
20 October, 2025