Laura K. Nelson: I'm looking for a very specific type of scholar: A historian who uses computational text analysis methods - ideally word embeddings or later methods, who works in an actual history department, who publishes in history outlets, who resides in North America. #DH help?

I'm looking for a very specific type of scholar: A historian who uses computational text analysis methods - ideally word embeddings or later methods, who works in an actual history department, who publishes in history outlets, who resides in North America. #DH help?

Ones that come to mind who are great and who, incidentally, don't perfectly fit the above: Jo Guldi and Lauren Klein. Who else?

Zoe LeBlanc, but is in an iSchool

John Randolph is in history

Thanks @ecourtem.bsky.social 😊!! While in iSchool, I'm definitely a historian who uses embeddings, so happy to chat @lauraknelson.bsky.social Besides @lincolnmullen.com & @joguldi.bsky.social, I would also recommend @regan008.bsky.social, @nolauren.bsky.social, and @jerielizabeth.bsky.social

Could probably recommend more names but would be helpful to know if you mean historians who code and do text analysis or historians who collaborate with CS/Data Scientists (many more in the latter group I would imagine)

The former. I'm looking to convince skeptical Professional Historians (capital H) that it's ok, possible, and maybe even good? to teach these skills to their grad students. I'm looking for model scholars(hip), and (why I said North Am.), to maybe even invite a few out here to give talks.

Gotcha! Ya definitely experienced that skepticism before/wrote a Debates in DH chapter about that with Jeri 😅. Would definitely strongly recommend Lincoln or Amanda then since both are in History departments that try to teach some programming to historians (at GMU and Clemson, respectively).

Luke Blaxill does everything but reside in the US, including trying to convince skeptical colleagues onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

My department at the University of Saskatchewan is a bit of an outlier. We have a lot of people doing DH, but mostly focused on GIS/spatial and database work. But we’re also working with web archives using NLP methods and have a new PhD working alongside Zoe who is planning to text mine.

My buddy @pietervdheede.bsky.social showed me an email just yesterday from a student who took our beginner DH course and has now successfully implemented WEM's in their thesis. It really doesn't take much to get them started.

Hey @lauraknelson.bsky.social! Thanks @zoeleblanc.bsky.social and @jasonheppler.org for the shout out. I’d be happy to chat. @lincolnmullen.com taught me how to use word embeddings and now I teach at Clemson in our new digital history PhD program. It’s required for our students to learn this stuff.

@jcatalano.bsky.social is my colleague at Clemson and teaches the theory behind word embeddings in our theories of digital analysis class. I’m sure he’d be happy to chat as well.

Zoe, I’m glad you don’t mind me outing you as multi-talented & omnicompetent 🙂

In addition to Jo and Laura, my colleague @lincolnmullen.com has published on this, I’d also recommend @nolauren.bsky.social, @regan008.bsky.social. @bschmidt.bsky.social might have ideas. I have some on-and-off work I’m doing on this but haven’t published anything on it yet.

Christopher Cantwell at Loyola. I think Jason Heper has an appointment in History as part of his job at the RRC

*Heppler

incidentally I’m in English with a courtesy appointment in History in part because I’ve done so much reviewing *for* history presses and journals, which obviously says something about the availability of capital-h Historians

"...but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. "

What are you looking for this person for?

Broadly I am looking for scholarship to point to when asked questions by history faculty, and also possibly invite some folks out to give talks/colloquiums if the department is open to it.

what about @jmotis.bsky.social?

Jim Clifford at U Saskatchewan

Similarly, everyone I thought of fits 2/3 criteria! @lincolnmullen.com mentioned below fits, but I'm not sure he is working with machine learning-driven methods (someone say if I'm wrong!). Perhaps @rmidura.bsky.social has ideas or has new work in this vein?

Sorry, I don’t do much with word embeddings! Will think over who else comes to mind. The problem is I know so few folks who ended up in “traditional” positions…

My colleague Lincoln Mullen does this kind of work, both in his own scholarship and as part of larger sustained, grant funded collective projects.

I think Charles Romney at UA Little Rock fits these criteria

Seconding Romney.

👀 Yes, he fits the bill!

Ian Milligan at the University of Waterloo

Ryan Shaffer and Benjamin Shearn did joint work on “Unsupervised Machine Learning on Colonial Kenyan Intelligence Reports: History, Methods, and Challenges”: neither may be a perfect fit but this joint work ticks multiple boxes

Mark Tebeau (ASU) would likely know, but I don’t think he’s on Bluesky

Maybe hist.uic.edu/profiles/kim... ? She is on sabbatical this year

My colleague Jakub Kabala (not on social media) is exactly this. A medievalist using computational text analysis to trace the authorship of anonymous Byzantine texts.

(and he is in a History Department)

I work in a History department, but I work in Hong Kong. I'm a Canadian and a UBC alum if that's relevant.

Random, but Greg Crane at Tufts has a dual appointment in Classics and Comp Sci. Doing different kinds of scholarship but I think just started a major where humanities students learn programming.

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