What’s in, or what isn’t in, a close-up? Kinolab is working with computer scientist @dbamman.bsky.social (UC Berkeley, School of Information) and other collaborators this year to optimize analytical AI for film and media research, bridging the gap between distant and close viewing practices. 📉🎥👀

📢 CfP for #CHR2027 is out! Submissions on all aspects of computational humanities research welcome; all details available here: 2027.computational-humanities-research.org/cfp/ And yes, CHR2027 will take place a little later than usual. So you *could* start later… but we suggest starting now!

This has been a desideratum since the day we first published this model -- I'm so happy Patrick figured this out!

Read about @guhrs.bsky.social: www.ischool.berkeley.edu/news/2026/po...

Models are now expert math solvers, and so AI for math education is receiving increasing attention. Our new preprint evaluates 11 VLMs on our QA benchmark, DrawEduMath. We highlight a startling gap: models perform less well on inputs from K-12 students who need more help. 🧵

Just a testimonial: potato 1.0 is amazing and I use it all the time for annotation. Excited to see what’s in 2.0!

New paper to appear at EACL 2026 main conference, and it's now up on arxiv: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.17536. The character limit here is insane, so I'll let the screenshots speak for themselves. We put together a new dataset for conversational role attribution & thread disentanglement.

That DHS/ICE and anyone up or down the chain could describe this murder victim as a “domestic terrorist” is utter depravity.

I used to be astonished that John Keats wrote everything by 26yo (and still am) but now newly in awe to learn that late Beatles (“let it be” etc) were 29?!

This program brought together such a wonderful group of ~30 PhD students for two weeks at Berkeley last year with backgrounds in sociology, information, law, computer science and more — same idea but in Oxford next summer; apply by Feb 2 if you’re looking to make connections across fields

📢 Ph.D. STUDENTS: The app is now open to join us for the Oxford-Berkeley Summer Doctoral Program, an opportunity for students to learn from & engage with leading academics in the field of information and internet studies! #AcademicSky Deadline ⏰: 2/2 #OIISDP #OIIBerkeleySDP
https://bit.ly/4p4CK2n

Berkeley wrote up our work on measuring the stories in contemporary songs and had me reflect on the origin of that work in Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”

Excited to get this work out in the world at #chr2025 (with Sabrina Baur, Mackenzie Cramer, Anna Ho and Tom McEnaney) -- asking: how much do contemporary songs tell stories, and how has that changed over the past half century? anthology.ach.org/volumes/vol0...

New grant program announcement: You've heard me talk this morning about those 23 new DH awards from @schmidtsciences.bsky.social HAVI program? Well, we just announced our new RFP for 2026! Teams can be global too! Please consider applying. RFP here: www.schmidtsciences.org/opportunity/...

En route to #CHR2025 in Luxembourg — looking forward to seeing people there!

📢 The #CHR2025 proceedings are out! 97 papers, ~1600 pages of computational humanities 🔥 Now published via the new Anthology of Computers and the Humanities, with DOIs for every paper. 🔗 anthology.ach.org/volumes/vol0... And don’t forget: registration closes tomorrow (20 Nov)!

It's the season for PhD apps!! 🥧 🦃 ☃️ ❄️ Apply to Wisconsin CS to research - Societal impact of AI - NLP ←→ CSS and cultural analytics - Computational sociolinguistics - Human-AI interaction - Culturally competent and inclusive NLP with me! lucy3.github.io/prospective-...

why intern at Ai2? 🐟interns own major parts of our model development, sometimes even leading whole projects 🐡we're committed to open science & actively help our interns publish their work reach out if u wanna build open language models together 🤝 links 👇

The UC Berkeley School of Information is hiring an assistant professor in the broad field of Information--including areas of info seeking/retrieval, digital humanities, cultural analytics, info viz, & philosophy of information (among others). Deadline Nov 1! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05014

Trying to keep my professional chill but I’m SO excited Carnegie Mellon is launching a cluster hire in computational humanities—MULTIPLE JOBS! 1. Asst Teaching Track Prof in Computational Humanities - apply.interfolio.com/173622 2. Asst Tenure Track Prof in CH - apply.interfolio.com/173626

Unfortunately, I expect that the fact they won a pretty resounding fair use victory is going to be lost in much of the coverage. They lost on downloading & storing the LibGen dataset (straight infringement!), but the act of training on copyrighted material (+ making their own ebooks) was a win.

This is such a pity -- "Push It" has, hands down, the greatest hook of all time (and the original version is now only available on youtube?) www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCad...

I realized recently that in 10 years of teaching I don't think I've ever asked students to pay for a textbook for a class -- largely due to these excellent draft chapters of Jurafsky & Martin.

Berkeley Sociology is hiring faculty! Sept 1 application deadline. Two positions: (1) open area junior search. aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05013, (2) associate or full professor in Anti-Black Racism and Social Inclusion aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05012 Please help spread the word!

I'm thrilled to be doing an oral presentation on "Culture is not Trivia" at #ACL2025 next Wednesday 7/30, as well as participating in the human-centered NLP panel afterwards! (thanks also @lauraknelson.bsky.social for the shoutout in her #ic2s2 keynote today!) aclanthology.org/2025.acl-lon...

One of the fun parts of policy work is that you have a handful of extremely important, esoteric, but load-bearing legal concepts (like fair use) that only ever make it into public consciousness when they're being targeted for destruction, and public opinion about them is entirely outcome-dependent.

Creative people and people of good will who are allies and advocates for creativity need to come to grips with the fact that AI training is generally fair use for the same deep reasons that critique, parody, teaching, scholarship, and other daily creative practices are fair use.

Go to WI and work with Lucy! And stay for the farmer's market, memorial union, orpheum, willy st coop, chocolate shoppe, american players theater, and the million other things that make Madison an amazing place to live. PhD app deadline in December.

I’m a week late with my #thanksbrett but just want to add my appreciation too — in thinking of all the careers that ODH has given space to and supported (including my own), words can’t suffice. @brettbobley.bsky.social maybe at least it’s now permitted to let us buy you a beer.

Flying back today from a circuit of some (not all!) of the great DH centers in Germany (Darmstadt, Bielefeld, Leipzig and Würzburg). Such great energy and amazing people moving the field forward at each one. I'm bringing back lots of ideas.

My course proposal for Cultural Analytics @berkeleyischool.bsky.social has been approved for Fall 2025! This is the fullest expression of my vision for CA: a radical interdisciplinary experiment for rethinking knowledge production at the intersection of the humanities and machine learning. (1/9)

I'm joining Wisconsin CS as an assistant professor in fall 2026!! There, I'll continue working on language models, computational social science, & responsible AI. 🌲🧀🚣🏻‍♀️ Apply to be my PhD student! Before then, I'll postdoc for a year in the NLP group at another UW 🏔️ in the Pacific Northwest

📚 Check out the newest JCA article by Li Lucy (@lucy3.bsky.social), Camilla Griffiths, Claire Ying, JJ Kim-Ebio, Sabrina Baur, Sarah Levine, Jennifer L. Eberhardt, David Bamman (@dbamman.bsky.social), and Dorottya Demszky. culturalanalytics.org/article/1316...

At Perseus, the vast majority of hits have always been from non .edu addresses. NEH means the Greek and Roman world is available to everyone, not just academics.

Among these is one working with me -- if you have a background in literary/cultural theory and are interested in the ways in which computational methods, including LLMs, are able to provide support for empirical sensemaking about literature, media and culture, please get in touch!

We just launched an open search for postdocs at the @berkeleyischool.bsky.social in a bunch of areas (social informatics, climate informatics, communications, econ, behavioral science, literary theory, algorithmic justice), all mentored by different faculty: aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04845

The people at the NEH are among the most knowledgeable and professional public servants I know. They operate with a shoestring budget already. Just let them be.

If you're an international student at UC (or beyond), know your rights: www.universityofcalifornia.edu/sites/defaul...

It's been delayed a little, but here — at last — is the CFP for Schmidt Sciences' Humanities and AI Virtual Institute, to support research "at the intersection of AI and the humanities." Expressions of interest are due April 4th. Pls RT! www.schmidtsciences.org/humanities-a...

Not sure if I can imagine a bigger driver for protest turnout out than being commanded not to protest — happening in dozens of cities nationwide this friday! standupforscience2025.org

arxiv.org/abs/2502.19190 we're still tinkering, but couldn't wait to share.

Postdoc opportunity at the School of Information Sciences, Urbana-Champaign. Teaching one course a semester. Application deadline April 1, but they recommend conversation with potential faculty mentors in advance of that date. Renewable for a second year. Pls RT! ischool.illinois.edu/research/pos...

There's been a lot of work on "culture" in NLP, but not much agreement on what it is. A position paper by me, @dbamman.bsky.social, and @ibleaman.bsky.social on cultural NLP: what we want, what we have, and how sociocultural linguistics can clarify things. Website: naitian.org/culture-not-... 1/n

A new study by Ph.D. student @dan-hickey.bsky.social found that weekly rates of hate speech on X rose about 50% in the months after its purchase. 🔍 “We need to know when we’re getting content moderation right and when we’re getting it wrong," he said. More: www.ischool.berkeley.edu/news/2025/st...

I need an explainer for the Ross/Westlaw case that tells me what Ross was “training” — a generative QA system? A search engine? Is it just retrieving the bulk memos (that infringe on the headnotes?). Not clear to me how AI is implicated @bbutler.bsky.social @matthewsag.bsky.social

New @ai2.bsky.social paper accepted to #NAACL2025! We worked with Teaching Lab and ASSISTments to create a new dataset for evaluating VLMs. DrawEduMath includes 2,030 teacher-annotated images of students’ handwritten responses to math problems. Website: drawedumath.org

Two tenure-track positions in AI at the School of Information Sciences, UIUC. Artificial intelligence is broadly construed here to include AI policy, governance, ethics, AI for cultural heritage, &c. Review of applications will start Jan 6th. Please RT and share! #MLSky #NeurIPS

New issue of my newsletter: “Books, AI, and the Public Good: A New Grant” — A Mellon-funded project to develop an ethical, public-interest way to incorporate books into artificial intelligence

See this article by @rachaelgs.bsky.social and @authorsalliance.bsky.social emphasizing the need for researchers to work with their libraries (the ones who negotiate contracts with publishers) to not negotiate away their fair use rights