Eric D. Widmer is a full professor of sociology at the University of Geneva. He has developed an understanding of families as complex configurations of interdependencies, always on the move in the life course. Family research often predefines what families are and focuses on a small number of family dyads (mostly husbands and wives, sometimes parents and their biological children or siblings). Because of the complexity of contemporary family contexts, researchers need to go beyond those dyads and see how a large and non-deterministic set of family relationships is intertwined. Eric has participated throughout the years to a series of empirical research on couples, siblings, stepfamilies, mobile families, etc. In each of them, he has stressed the changing forms of interdependencies among a large number of family members using social network methods.
Within GenFam Eric Widmer works on Family structures, relationships, and well-being.