Venues do not just host creative work, they shape who getsto build a career around it. This idea is at the heart of Yixuan Liu's presentation during the November SNAC (Students, Networks and Collaboration) event, a monthly seminar hosted by Graduate Student Association (GSA) where Network Science students share and discuss their ongoing research projects.
Yixuan is a fourth-year PhD student working with Prof. Albert-László Barabási. When presenting her research at SNAC on “The uneven impact of venues on creative careers” she starts from a simple notion: a venue is the space where a public event happens, but it also frames how work is seen and valued, with high-status venues (for example, journals like Nature or Science, or awards like the Oscars) acting as powerful magnifiers that can upgrade the perceived quality of the same underlying work.
Yixuan applies a heterogeneous difference-in-differences framework to track how scientists and artists fare well beyond their first breakthrough appearance in prestigious spaces, allowing her to capture how the venue effect unfolds and varies across groups over time. In physics, early access to top venues predicts a long-lasting rise in citations, productivity, and grant success, while in visual arts, exhibiting in prestigious galleries or fairs is followed by sustained increases in solo and group shows and participation in major art events over more than a decade. Yet the gains are unevenly distributed: male scientists tend to see stronger boosts from elite scientific venues, whereas in the visual arts, it is often female artists whose careers accelerate more once they gain access to high-prestige spaces.
SNAC is a series of highly customizable research presentations that meet the students’ need for a more informal setting where to stress-test new ideas, find collaborators, receive feedback, practice for upcoming presentations in front of an audience, or pair up with a senior graduate student for a dual presentation that will help them get comfortable with a new research discipline. Stay tuned on our events page for more SNACs in the new year!!
