Andrea Baronchelli

I am a Professor of Complexity Science at City St George's, University of London, and a Research Associate at the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies.

I study how humans and artificial agents behave in decentralised socio-technical systems. My research looks at how we coordinate through networks — for example by developing shared norms and category systems — and at how technologies like blockchain, social media, and AI are changing public debate, governance, and decision-making. To do this, I analyse large datasets, build mathematical models, and run experiments with both humans and AI agents.

My work has helped inform public debate and shape policy. It has been supported by organisations including UKRI, PayPal, ESRC, InnovateUK, and the UK Government. It has received wide media coverage and has had real-world impact, including its use as a case study in the UK’s national research assessment.

In 2019, I received the Young Scientist Award for Socio and Econophysics from the German Physical Society. From 2019 to 2021, I led the Economic Data Science theme at The Alan Turing Institute, where I launched the Token Economy theme in 2021 and led it until 2025.

Selected publications:

Shaping new norms for AI. Phil. Trans. of the Royal Soc. B (2024)
Persistent interaction patterns across social media platforms and over time. Nature (2024)
The systemic impact of deplatforming on social media. PNAS Nexus (2023)
Growing polarization around climate change on social media. Nature Climate Change (2022)
Macroscopic properties of buyer–seller networks in online marketplaces. PNAS Nexus (2022)
Central bank digital currencies risk becoming a digital Leviathan. Nature Human Behaviour (2022)
Mapping the NFT revolution: market trends, trade networks and visual features. Scientific Reports (2021)
Experimental evidence for scale-induced category convergence across populations. Nature Communications (2021)
From code to market: Network of developers and correlated returns of cryptocurrencies. Science Advances (2020)
The emergence of consensus. Royal Society Open Science (2018)
The dynamics of norm change in the cultural evolution of language. PNAS (2018)
Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention. Science (2018)
Evidence for a conserved quantity in human mobility. Nature Human Behaviour (2018)
Evolutionary dynamics of the cryptocurrency market. RSOS (2017)
The spontaneous emergence of conventions: An experimental study of cultural evolution. PNAS (2015)
Networks in Cognitive Science. Trends Cog. Sci. (2013)
Modeling human dynamics of face-to-face interaction networks. Phys. Rev. Lett. (2013)
Random Walks and Search in Time-Varying Networks. Phys. Rev. Lett. (2012)
Modeling the emergence of universality in color naming patterns. PNAS (2010)
Cultural route to the emergence of linguistic categories. PNAS (2008)
Sharp transition towards shared vocabularies in multi-agent systems. J. Stat. Mech. P06014 (2006)