I recently had the pleasure of collaborating with Phillip Ayoub and Kristina Stoeckl on their influential work, “The Global Fight Against Lgbti Rights: How Transnational Conservative Networks Target Sexual and Gender Minorities” (NYU Press). This project involved creating data visualizations that captured the analytical and communicative intent of the authors, starting from relatively complex datasets. The process, which included rigorous qualitative reviews by NYU editors, was both challenging and rewarding.

Visualizing the networks on the maps was challenging due to the relatively high number of nodes and relationships. Finding the right combination of graphical elements to allow for a clear representation required evaluating a variety of alternatives. I used R with rnaturalearth and the ggplot2 function geom_sf().

Visualizing the roles of actors and organizations in the various World Congress of Families required combining visual and analytical logic. The decision was made to position actors and organizations with a more constant presence at the base, visually emphasizing their foundational role in the events, with others gradually placed in higher positions. The use of color transparency further highlights both the constant presence (represented by less transparent colors) and the fluctuating or occasional presence (represented by higher transparency) at the events. For this purpose, I used a heatmap with the geom_tile() function in ggplot2. All data preprocessing and visualizations were done in R.