Pádraig MacCarron is a researcher in complex networks in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Limerick. He has a BSc in Astrophysics from University College Cork. He obtained a PhD from Coventry University on comparing the structural properties of social networks in narratives. After this he worked in the University of Oxford on social networks in a large mobile phone database. His work is interdisciplinary and has recently worked with colleagues in the Psychology Department on identifying polarisation in attitude networks, with the Law Department on criminal social networks and the Health Research Institute on trust partnership networks. His current work is on identifying structural properties of social networks in order to develop realistic models of social phenomena such as how communities form and fragment in social systems.