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Laura K. Nelson

@lauraknelson.bsky.social
4.2K followers 966 following 2.1K posts

Associate Professor @ UBC computational sociology machine learning is feminist You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing. www.lauraknelson.com

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Reposted by Laura K. Nelson
Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Thank you to @schmidtsciences.bsky.social for naming me an AI2050 Senior Fellow. The program asks: "AI has turned out to be hugely beneficial to society. What happened?" Answering it requires beginning to understand the cumulative effects of AI use; that is my project. www.ias.edu/news/alondra...
ias.edu
Alondra Nelson Receives AI2050 Senior Fellowship from Schmidt Sciences
Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science, has been named by Schmidt Sciences as a 2026 AI2050 Senior Fellow. Nelson is one of six senior researchers to receive this $...
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Mark J. Nelson @mm-jj-nn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
We have an opening for a tenured Professor / Associate Professor of Interactive Media "with an emphasis on interactive storytelling, worldbuilding, and/or playful design in the public interest". I'm on the hiring committee and happy to answer questions.
american.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Associate or Full Professor of Interactive Media Film and Media Arts School of Communication
American University is a student-centered research institution located in Washington, DC, with highly-ranked schools and colleges, internationally-renowned faculty, and a reputation for creating meani...
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
CFP: Generative Digital Humanities, a volume on AI and DH in the long-running Minnesota Debates in DH book series. To be co-edited by @zentralwerkstatt.org, @laurenfklein.bsky.social, @lnakamura.bsky.social, and myself. Deadline Nov. 1. Please share widely! dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/page/cfp-gen...
dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu
CFP: Generative Digital Humanities | Debates in the Digital Humanities
Transforming scholarly publications into living digital works
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
(I agree with both OP threads, just building on them) This is an interesting because 1) Folks were against teaching AI because "it's supposed to be easy," but agents have shown what many of us have long been saying: we need to teach bc it's *not* easy 2) Porn has always led technology development
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Oh no @ahmccumber.bsky.social
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Shelly Lundberg @shellyjlundberg.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Shameless self-promotion and a request. My publisher is asking me to encourage Amazon reviews, so.... If you bought How Economics Discovered Women on Amazon and like it, it would help me out if you post a short review. news.ucsb.edu/2026/022818/...
news.ucsb.edu
Economist Shelly Lundberg wins prestigious Mincer Award, releases book on gender economics
Lundberg's Mincer Award for lifetime achievement in economics scholarship comes as her newest book, “How Economics Discovered Women” hits the shelves.
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
You are talking to a bright, eager undergraduate student in CS. They are convinced that scientific reasoning is not socially/culturally conditioned. That is, the scientific method is the scientific method, whether it's 2026 Canada or 1850 China. What would you recommend they read? (Note the CS & UG)
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Great thread, great blog and report. And since we're plugging past work that is newly relevant, my heart has always been with this 2023 one: muse.jhu.edu/article/898331
Situated Knowledges and Partial Perspectives: 
A Framework for Radical Objectivity in 
Computational Social Science and 
Computational Humanities
Laura K. Nelson 
Just as the invention of the telescope revolu-
tionized the study of the heavens, so too by 
rendering the unmeasurable measurable, the 
technological revolution in mobile, Web, and 
Internet communications has the potential to 
revolutionize our understanding of ourselves 
and how we interact. . . . Three hundred years 
after Alexander Pope argued that the proper 
study of mankind should lie not in the heavens 
but in ourselves, we have finally found our tele-
scope. Let the revolution begin. 
—Duncan Watts
We have entered a new era of scholarship in the social sci-
ences and humanities: the computational era. Rooted in the 
analysis of unprecedented amounts of social data and cultural 
material, computational social science and computational humanities 
blend traditions from the social sciences and the humanities with tools 
and approaches from computer science, engineering, and linguistics. 
This disciplinary cross-pollination has unearthed old disciplinary debates, 
including those around epistemology: what constitutes knowledge and 
the goals of knowledge building and, particularly in the interpretive 
social sciences and the humanities, the role of objectivity in knowledge 
creation. 
Objectivity in science and scholarship has always been a contested 
terrain; it is no different in the computational era. While there are 
complexities and nuances to debates about objectivity, broadly speak-
ing since the nineteenth century,1 epistemological debates in science 
have revolved around the appropriate role of the subject in generat-
ing objective knowledge.2 On one side of this discourse is the ideal 
of science and scholarship as the pursuit of disembodied objectivity.
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YY Ahn @yyahn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
As people have predicted, there are quite a few open-source alternatives to Jev, including: - Laya, this was the original according to him: github.com/NandhaKishor... - on Apple Core ML / neural engine: github.com/mizorewww/la... - with Qwen: github.com/jaredpalmer/...
github.com
GitHub - NandhaKishorM/laya
Contribute to NandhaKishorM/laya development by creating an account on GitHub.
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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
It's possible for Jev/Laya/Decision Models to be not that big a deal as tech and massive as a new paradigm. Here's why I'm really excited from an NLP history perspective (thread)
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 22/09/2026
Models like Talkie-1930 sound like voices from the past. If they could reliably speak from specified historical vantage points, researchers might also use them to simulate the past. But how reliable are they? Today we release a benchmark answering that question for English contexts 1831-1930.
Free-text evaluation of answers to character modeling and constrained generation questions. This is just one of several scores Chronologic-EN can produce; we focus on it here because it's both the hardest test and the one most relevant to simulation of the past. Frontier models reach 72%; Talkie-1930 is stronger than several larger competitors, but not at the frontier by this measure. Note that this score has improved ~45% in the last two years, but still falls perceptibly short of ground truth.
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Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 22/09/2026
9 years ago I wrote about parallels between the idea of “mechanical objectivity” outlined in Daston & Galison’s book Objectivity & the rhetoric of “distant reading” in DH Prepping for today’s class discussing Objectivity, it strikes me that LLMs are forcing culture writ large to confront this myth
ryancordell.org
Objectivity and Distant Reading | Ryan C. Cordell
Book history, digital humanities, old newspapers, and information sciences
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
My 5 y/o is devastated that the weekend is 2 days while the school/work week is 5 days and that this will be the case for the rest of his life. Insisting that society got it backwards. The weekend should be 5 days. And kiddo, I got nothing in response. We'll contemplate that on the walk to school.
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Oh boy oh boy I was waiting for something like this for the sociology part of this report.
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Bart Bonikowski @bartbonikowski.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Another installment in a series of papers on perceived AI labor market shocks and political preferences, co-authored with my superstar team of collaborators (@sborwein.bsky.social, Beatrice Magistro, @rmichaelalvarez.bsky.social, and Peter Loewen). See post below for links to our previous work.
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Microwavable meals completely changed the structure of the household division of labor and is one reason we saw an influx of women into the workforce (who previously stayed home). Doesn't need to be a new cuisine to have made a massive social impact. (We should def study how people interact with AI)
Female Labor Force Participation and Time-Saving Household Technology: A Case Study of the Microwave from 1978 to 1989
R. S. Oropesa
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Yale Center For Research Computing @yalecrc.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
view.message.yale.edu?vawpToken=P7... Computational Social Science Workshop
view.message.yale.edu
We are excited to share the 2026-2027 Computational Social Science Workshop schedule! This year's faculty organizers are Daniel Karell and Balázs Kovács. To see the speaker schedule and sign up for future announcements, please visit the workshop's webpage: Computational Social Science Workshop. All announcements and updates to the sessions will be communicated via email and will be reflected on the workshop website.  Our first speaker will be joining us on Monday, September 28th. We hope to see you there and look forward to a great year!
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Elizabeth Wrigley-Field @wrigleyfield.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This stands out to me because I so often see academics give the opposite advice—save that for the next article or next book. It’s true that each piece of writing needs to be focused right to do its own work and not have readers lose their path on the journey you want to take them on. But in all the
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New preprint! A review article on Generative AI and Society, with the fantastic @thomasdavidson.bsky.social & Danny Karell (smartly not online!) osf.io/preprints/so... The lit on genAI is sprawling and mostly not in sociology. Our goal is to synthesize core themes relevant to sociologists. +
GENERATIVE AI AND SOCIETY
Laura K. Nelson,
Daniel Karell,
and Thomas Davidson

ABSTRACT
For sociologists, generative AI inherits the legacy of earlier computational technologies:  it is an advancement of machine learning already adopted as a methodology, and it intervenes in a society already shaped by algorithmic systems. Yet it also has a dimension that distinguishes it from previous computational methods, and one that makes it inherently sociological: its interactivity. In this review, we conceptualize the interactivity of generative AI and introduce a framework for understanding how it operates across individual, organizational, and institutional life. Specifically, the framework specifies how generative AI expands users, functions as a proxy for society, and expresses power,
both in sociological practice and in society. We conclude by suggesting three dynamics driven by generative AI that sociology will face in the near future: the transformation of scientific practice, the reorganization of social interaction, and the acceleration of algorithmic governance.

Keywords: generative AI,  interaction, computational sociology, methods, algorithms, algorithmic governance
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Oooof. I'm installing RStudio for the first time on this Linux machine and I've run into about 15 error messages just to get tidyverse installed. I thought we had fixed this nonsense in R, and that Python was now the problem child re: package management? Bracing myself for tomorrow's install class.
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Computational Communication Science Lab (CCL) @compcommlab.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
📢 We’re hiring a Postdoc in Computational Communication Science at the University of Vienna! 🔎 Text/image analysis, platform data & political communication 📍 Vienna ⏳ 6 years, full-time ⏰ Apply by 3 Oct jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi... Find out more about our team here: compcommlab.univie.ac.at
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Philipp Lorenz-Spreen @lorenzspreen.eurosky.social · 14/09/2026
But we must free ourselves from dependency on a handful of Silicon Valley CEOs, both in terms of infrastructure and know-how. For this, I am convinced, we need to build real capacity and take responsibility in the public sector, and demand transparency from these companies.
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Re-upping this one. @scottbot.net , I have a vague memory you created this image and shared it? Or maybe @ryanheuser.com ?
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Call for short papers: The Language Games We Play: Opportunities and Obstacles in Studying Macro-Level Phenomena with Computational Methods EGOS 2027 (in Liverpool, UK) www.egos.org/jart/prj3/eg...
egos.org
EGOS - CALL for Short Papers - European Group for Organizational Studies
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I've been teaching this class on Data/AI and Society for so long the primary readings I have always assigned were initially cutting edge, then established but timely, then borderline out of date, and now established history texts. So my class is now a history class. I'm choosing to embrace that.
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Someone on here has shared an image they use in class that shows the different foods different countries/cultures call a biscuit. Who made that image and where can I find it? And can I use it in class? (My Google search is just leading me to a bunch of AI-generated sloppity slop)
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Dᴜsᴛɪɴ Sᴛᴏʟᴛᴢ @dustinstoltz.com · 08/09/2026
We're hiring a medical sociologists at Lehigh! DL: September 29th careercenter.asanet.org/job/1311683/...
careercenter.asanet.org
Assistant Professor of Sociology - Bethlehem, Pennsylvania job with Lehigh University | 1311683
Seeking a medical sociologist for tenure track position at R1 university.
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This skeet will self destruct @pardoguerra.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
This is really the crux: At least at R1s, there is no way possible of both lowering class sizes and keeping the institution afloat, other than through some kind of alchemy by transmuting concrete into gold.
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Noshir Contractor @noshir.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
1/ Co-directing the first @casbsstanford.bsky.social Summer Institute on AI Methods for Social Scientists (AIMS) with Lara Tiedens was one of the highlights of my sabbatical at CASBS. A month later, here are five key takeaways. 🧵
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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Also, and not that it will prevent this from being fodder for someone’s quote post, but this is not a both sides or a middle ground argument. It’s a double negative. Neither is a world I want to live in.
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Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 05/09/2026
On today's passing of radical feminist Robin Morgan, I remember my 1995 letter to the Washington Post noting that Morgan used "politically correct" back in 1970 to mock liberal feminists who were trying to impress leftists. ("PC" was such a clusterfvck.) www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opin...
If, as Jefferson Morley reports, William Safire didn't find uses of the term "politically correct" before 1975, it must be because he (like Morley) wasn't looking for earlier meanings.
Robin Morgan used the term in the introduction to the 1970 feminist anthology,
"Sisterhood Is Powerful" to refer to liberals who thought a few superficial changes in their language or tone would endear them to radical feminists.
No wonder, then, that radicals are infuriated that the term "politically correct" is used to describe a conscious stance of the "left."
PHILIP COHEN Takoma Park
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Siobhán McElduff @siobhanmcelduff.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Well, I'm doing this next week in Vancouver. Learn all about see-through togas and dancing orators. If that is your sort of thing.
eventbrite.ca
Sip & Learn: "How to Be a Man (and Fail at It) in Ancient Rome"
A history of the absurd rules that broke manhood in ancient Rome, from good dancing and kissing your wife to having smooth legs.
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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I'm co-hosting this conference on Humanistic AI at Duke 9/25-26; more details + speakers + full schedule soon but in the meantime, if you're in the Research Triangle Area, let us know if you want to come by or participate. Just email me - we'd love to hear from you! deeptech.duke.edu/event/humani...
deeptech.duke.edu
Humanistic AI: Generative Models and the Future of Cultural and Historical Interpretation | Deep Tech
Humanistic AI: Generative Models and the Future of Cultural and Historical Interpretation
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
People are piling onto this and they need to knock it off. OP is correct. As a woman, Steinem has lived through a time (just a few years ago!) when she had more rights than women in the U.S. have at this moment. This is undeniably true. Good on the OP for stating this loud and clear. RIP Gloria.
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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Gloria Steinem died with fewer rights than she had during her lifetime. That fact needs to be front and centre of every media report, every dedication, every discussion of her death.
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I'm diving in. I seriously think this is one of the most important books to come out in the past few years.
Front cover of the cook "The Division of Rationalized Labor" by Michelle Jackson. The book cover is lavender with pops of bright yellow. It's sitting on my lap, and I'm reclining on a couch
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I generally absolutely hate shopping, but there are a few places that are done so well I actually enjoy shopping at them. These are each one-offs, and just can't be replicated. Welks in Vancouver is one. And I'm adding Coombs Market as another. There are precious few others.
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Checking out the back to school themed display at the local Sport Chek and, wait a minute. Computer, enhance #sociology
A window display with three mannequins wearing sports gear, a red locker, and a backpack in a vertical crate with two textbooks on top.A close up of the two textbooks. The top one is sociology (a brief introduction)
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Yourqueerprof @drcompton.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
#CFP: Oxford Intersections: Gender Justice, is a series exploring how gender shapes everyday life and how it intersects with power, inequality, identity, and justice. I’m editing the Gender, Home, and Family section. Let me know if you have questions! @oxfordunipress.bsky.social #rollingsubmissions
academic.oup.com
About Gender Justice
Gender is an element of every human’s identity, intersecting with every aspect of human life. It is an enormous subject, one that crosses myriad intellectual fi
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
It's Friday night, end of August. The campus Canvas site is dreadfully slow. I can only assume that, like me, faculty are all simultaneously working to get their course ready for the first day of class. Can a couple hundred other UBC faculty go watch a movie or something, so I can work more quickly?
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Cameron Blevins @cblevins.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Agentic AI is also kryptonite for online teaching. Here's Claude's Chrome plugin navigating a dummy Canvas shell in Student Mode to take notes on a lecture and a primary source packet, then use it complete (and ace) a quiz that I tried to ground deeply in that material.
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Insightful thread from @cblevins.bsky.social , who is also doing some of the most innovative and thoughtful work applying ML/AI to history. What are our solutions to online teaching? Cameron lays out why "online teaching is toast" is not a solution (namely, we're not all at MIT). So what is?
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Guys this thread is up to 64. 64 DAGs that look like record covers.
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 27/08/2026
Breaking News: Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist whose work caused a stir in the 1960s, while her “Infinity Room” installations drew crowds in recent decades, has died at 97.
nyti.ms
Yayoi Kusama, Pop Artist Who Expanded and Endured, Dies at 97
The Japanese artist’s polka-dot covered paintings, phallic sculptures and public performances caused a stir in New York City and Europe in the 1960s.
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
"RAG improves technical quality, in particular factual accuracy, and prompt engineering steers social representation as requested." I've seen enough similar results, I'm ready to take a stand: We can easily steer these models around. "Bias" is caused by the way you use LLMs, not the LLM itself.
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Cara Marta Messina @caramartamessina.com · 25/08/2026
Marist is hiring an Assistant Prof of English, Technical and Professional Writing. I'm chairing the committee, so please feel free to reach out with any questions! Submit by Oct 31 for highest consideration (deadline not on ad). careers.marist.edu/en-us/job/49...
careers.marist.edu
Careers at Marist - Marist University
Thank you for your interest in a career with Marist University!
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Let's gooooo!
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
“... one cannot properly tune into the currents of machine intelligence flowing across the planet if one remains confined within a single geographical perspective.” (Greenspan and Konior, 4)
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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Computational sociologist: the glass is 0.046408 -0.128050 -0.015343 0.064112 -0.049744 -0.020974 0.128793 0.059280 -0.079039 -0.044810 0.007333 -0.082801 -0.067706 -0.190251 -0.069751 -0.023319 -0.067211 -0.040688
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Jason Radford, PhD @jsradford.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Sociology will always have @lauraknelson.bsky.social !
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