Hi, Iâm Melanie Walsh. Iâm an Assistant Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. Before UW, I was a Postdoctoral Associate in Information Science at Cornell University, where I worked with David Mimno. I received my PhD in English Literature from Washington University in St. Louis.
My research interests include data science, digital humanities, cultural analytics, literature, and librariesâpreferably all of the above combined. You can download my full CV here.
I am currently at work on a book project, When Postwar American Fiction Went Viral: Protest, Profit, and Popular Readers in the 21st Century, which follows the social media afterlives of American authors.
I also designed and released a free, open-source textbook, Introduction to Cultural Analytics & Python, which introduces the programming language Python to people interested in the humanities and social science.
With wonderful collaborators, I also lead several projects that Iâm proud of:
In my free time, I like to play basketball đ, hike â°ď¸, and paddle board among seal friends đŚ (like in Shilshole Bay pictured above!).
I am recruiting one student to join my group in 2025-2026. For more info, see âMentorshipâ.
news
Oct 22, 2024 | This week I am attending the Mozilla Responsible Computing Challenge (RCC) Global Conclave in Kerala, India on behalf of the Responsible Datasets in Context project. |
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Sep 15, 2024 | Grant news! The Post45 Data Collective received a Level II NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant. This award will help us make book data more useable and interoperable. |
Oct 30, 2023 | Grant news! Very excited to share that we received a Mozilla Responsible Computing Challenge Award. This award is supporting Responsible Datasets in Contextâa repository of datasets that are paired with rich documentation, data essays, and teaching resources. Read the press release. |
Sep 01, 2023 | Job news! I started a new position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. |
Jan 15, 2023 | Grant news! We were awarded a Level III NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant for our AI for Humanists Project. Read the press release. |
selected publications
- Does ChatGPT Have a Poetic Style?In Computational Humanities Research (CHR), Dec 2024arXiv:2410.15299
- Sonnet or Not, Bot? Poetry Evaluation for Large Models and DatasetsIn Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP, Nov 2024
- The Challenges and Possibilities of Social Media Data: New Directions in Literary Studies and the Digital HumanitiesNov 2023publisher: U of Minnesota Press
- Where is all the book data?Public Books, Nov 2022đď¸I spoke about this essay with Australian radio ABC.đď¸
- The Goodreads âClassicsâ: A Computational Study of Readers, Amazon, and Crowdsourced Amateur CriticismPost45 and Journal of Cultural Analytics, Nov 2021