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Barry Wellman (b. September 30, 1942) directs NetLab as a professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. His areas of research are community sociology, the Internet, human-computer interaction and social structure, as manifested in social networks in communities and organizations. His overarching interest is in the paradigm shift from group-centered relations to networked individualism.

Professor Wellman has been at the University of Toronto since 1967, gaining his PhD from Harvard University in 1969, his A.B. from Lafayette College in 1963 ((where he captained the undefeated 1962 College Bowl team), and his high school degree from the Bronx High School of Science in 1959. ^[1]

Wellman has won outstanding lifetime achievement awards from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, the International Network for Social Network Analysis (an organization he founded in 1976), and two sections of the American Sociological Association: Community and Urban Sociology; and Communication and Information Technologies. He has headed the Sociological Research Association (honor society), and in September 2006, he was awarded the S.D. Clark endowed chair at the University of Toronto, named after Samuel Delbert Clark the founder of Toronto's Sociology Department. He has also been the President of the Sociological Research Association honor society. ^[2][3].

Professor Wellman is known for his interactive style of teaching and extensive mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students.

He is the editor of three books, and the author of more than 200 articles. His books are:

• Social Structures: A Network Approach (with the late S.D. Berkowitz; Cambridge University Press, 1988);
• Networks in the Global Village (Boulder, CO: Westview 1999);
• The Internet in Everyday Life (with Caroline Haythornthwaite; Oxford: Blackwell 2002).

Professor Wellman has had a long career as a community sociologist, studying non-local communities as [social network]s and demonstrating that community was no longer confined to neighborhoods.

Much of his current work focuses on the interplay between information and communication technologies, especially the Internet, social relations and social structure. Some of this work has been collaborative with computer scientists, communication scientists and information scientists.

Professor Wellman currently heads the Connected Lives project studying the interplay between communication, community and domestic relations in Toronto and in Chapleau in rural northern Ontario. Others active in the project include Dean Behrens, Jeffrey Boase, Kristen Berg, Juan-Antonio Carrasco, Paul Glavin, Bernie Hogan, Tracy L.M. Kennedy, Rhonda McEwen, Diana Mok and Natalie Zinko. Early findings are summarized in "Connected Lives: The Project," in Networked Neighbourhoods, edited by Patrick Purcell (London: Springer, 2006).

Wellman is also studying (with Wenhong Chen) Transnational Immigrant Entrepreneurs who link China and North America.

Wellman has an extensive website with many of his publications available for reading. He has also compiled, for fun, Updating Cybertimes: translating songs, movies, popular culture and historical figures from pre-Internet days to current times.

• Barry Wellman website.
• Barry Wellman, “Through Life from the Bronx to Cyberspace.” Aristeia, Fall, 2005: 24. [Longer version, “On (From) Lafayette: A Journey Through Life from the Bronx to Cyberspace” (Sept 2003) [www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/index.html]