DSci Happy Hour with Lauren Klein

When Theory Leads: Towards a Humanities-Forward Model of Computational Research -- The advent of Large Language Models and the cultural data they rely upon has renewed a longstanding conversation about the role of the humanities, and humanities scholars, in computational research. This role has to do not only with the application of LLMs (and related computational methods) to humanities research questions, but also with the application of humanistic methods to computational research. Using a series of projects about social movements from the Emory Digital Humanities Lab as case studies, this talk will show how humanistic methods—and theory in particular—can not only inform the overall design of computational research projects but can also shape the development of computational models themselves. Connecting the contributions of these projects back to the broader landscape of AI/ML, I will argue that humanities theory, and the scholars who produce and engage with it, have very clear roles to play if we are to envision applications of LLMs (and AI/ML more generally) that enhance our knowledge of the cultures we seek to understand and support.