Hi, I’m Melanie Walsh, and I’m an Assistant Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. Before joining the faculty at UW, I was a Postdoctoral Associate in Information Science at Cornell University, where I worked with David Mimno. Before that, I received my PhD in English & American Literature from Washington University in St. Louis, where I was a Fellow in the Humanities Digital Workshop. My research interests include data science, digital humanities, cultural analytics, LIS, social media, and American literature & culture—preferably all of the above combined.
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.
Additionally, I am co-editor of the Post45 Data Collective — a peer-reviewed, open-source repository for literary and cultural data after 1945. I am also co-PI of the AI for Humanists project (formerly the BERT for Humanists project), which makes recent advances in artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, GPT-3, and BERT, accessible to scholars in the humanities.
News
| September 2023 |
I started a new position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. |
| October 2022 |
I was interviewed by Australian radio ABC about my essay, “Where Is All The Book Data?” |
