Starting in 2004 with a gathering of mainly Swiss, German, French and Italian scientists the conference on Applied Social Network Analysis (ASNA) has since then expanded in numbers and origins of participants and developed from an initially more European into a genuine international conference on Social Network Analysis.
The general approach of this conference was to be as open and diverse as possible thus allowing also young scholars to present their work even if at the initial stages of a project while gathering an interested audience that could provide feedbacks and helpful suggestions. In addition, the ASNA conference meetings provide a general platform for researchers from different fields that become increasingly attracted by Social Network Analysis.
The present volume presents a number of English and German contributions from the ASNA 2005 conference which took place on the 20th and 21st October 2005 at the University of Zürich, Switzerland.