Only a day after getting home from ArcticNet 2018, I was packing up my bags again to settle into the Monastère des Augustines for the Complex Networks Winter Workshop. Say what?

My strategy to survive in academia involves saying yes to everything that motivates or intrigues me. Without encouraging others to do the same, I will say that this strategy has served me well in terms of mental health. So when my good friend Jean-Gabriel Young told me his peers Laurent Hébert-Dufresne and Antoine Allard were hosting a northern-themed workshop on complex networks sciences in Québec city, I immediately signed up.

The workshop started with two days of classes on complex systems, network science, and their combination. Faculty included Elspeth Ready, who presented her work on food sharing networks in Kangiqsujuaq, as well as experts from network hubs University of Vermont and Northeastern University

Some takeaways from Elspeth’s talk:

We spent the rest of the week trying to hack together a network science model for the spread of corruption. Loved working with my “Power to Corrupt” team: Oscar Granados (Finance), Ana M. Martín González (Ecology), Blanche Saint-Béat (Ecology, Northern Studies), Melody K. Schiaffino (Public Health), and Guillaume St-Onge (Physics).