My Ph-D-thesis deals with the Basel Mission as a case study for transnational religious networks and religious internationalism during the first world war period. The expectations I had for the summer school haven’t been met completely. I have to admit that I hoped for a more theoretical approach to the advantages and disadvantages of social network analysis and network theory. But as it turned out, nevertheless I really benefited from this years’ GRAINES summer school – just in some other (and probably even more important) aspects.

Interconnecting with the other participants revealed to me that most of my methodological and theoretical problems are actually common. In this respect the conversations with the supervisors and specific workshops were very helpful. Is it possible to analyse “multi”-networks or will this lead to a fraying of the research object and a Latourian “the-whole-world-is-a-network”-approach, in turn leading nowhere? Is there a problem at all or does one only need to find the courage to cut things off? While discussing these questions with the other participants, we decided to propose a workshop, which was chosen for the unconference day. The following questions were discussed: How to specify the intensity of certain connections within the groups and institutions one surveys? How to define a boundary of ones’ “network”? How to deal with multi-layered networks?

In all this questions mentioned above I’ve reached a state of stronger clarity. To sum up, the summer school was really productive.