Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · 15d

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

Assistant Professor - Information - School of Information

University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

aprecruit.berkeley.edu

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Reposted by David Bamman

Chris Warren @chrisvvarren.bsky.social · 19d

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

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Reposted by David Bamman

Meredith Rose @mrose.ink · Sep 5

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.

Will Oremus @willoremus.com · Sep 5

Breaking: In landmark agreement, AI firm Anthropic will pay $1.5 billion to settle a copyright lawsuit brought by book authors and publishers. Story to follow.

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Aug 28

A Gentleman in Moscow!

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Aug 27

+1 to SocArXiv for this too -- we had a similar experience with a recent cultural analytics paper of ours (that I love!) that has a better home there.

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Aug 25

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...

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Aug 25

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.

Dan Jurafsky @jurafsky.bsky.social · Aug 24

Now that school is starting for lots of folks, it's time for a new release of Speech and Language Processing! Jim and I added all sorts of material for the August 2025 release! With slides to match! Check it out here: web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/sl...

Speech and Language Processing

web.stanford.edu

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Aug 20

Here’s one from @kentkchang.bsky.social ! arxiv.org/pdf/2505.17536

arxiv.org

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David J. Harding @djhardingsoc.bsky.social · Jul 25

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!

Assistant Professor - Open Field - Sociology

University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

aprecruit.berkeley.edu

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Reposted by David Bamman

naitian @naitian.org · Jul 23

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...

A poster for "Culture is not Trivia: sociocultural theory for cultural NLP" which takes the form of a flow-chart. The central question, and the starting point of the flow chart, is "What is culture in cultural NLP?"

An arrow is labeled "wait, so what's cultural NLP?" This leads to a block explaining that the goals of cultural NLP are described in section 2 of the paper. They include inclusivity, depth, discerning, and adaptiveness.

That leads to an arrow that says "that sounds great!". But there are recurring challenges in this kind of work! Section 3 surveys some of these: a discomfort around the proxies being chosen, a lack of coverage, and a lack of dynamicity.

That in turn leads to an arrow labeled "Hm, sounds like we need to figure out..." and it leads back to the main question: "What is culture in cultural NLP?"

A final arrow extends below this block: "Well, who's to say, really?"

This points to sociocultural linguistics. Section 4 explores how other disciplines, like sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and discourse analysis have faced similar challenges in the past. Section 4.2 gives an overview of sociocultural linguistics, which is a set of principles tying together some convergent themes: emergence, positionality, indexicality, relationality, and partialness.

One arrow extends from this asking, "what's that have to do with cultural NLP?" Section 5 gives a case study of how indexicality clarifies how to think about stereotypies in the context of mining cultual knowledge from the web.

Another arrow says "How can I build safe NLP systems?" Section 6.2 explores how localization can serve as a useful model from building culturally aware technologies because it forces developers to define culture explicitly and tractably.

Finally, an arrow asks "how can I study culture with NLP methods?" Section 6.1 lays out theoretically motivated directions for future empirical and theoretical work in computationally modeling culture.

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Reposted by David Bamman

Meredith Rose @mrose.ink · Jul 21

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.

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Brandon Butler @bb.usefairuse.com · Jul 22

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.

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Jul 22

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.

Lucy Li @lucy3.bsky.social · Jul 22

I'm sadly not at #IC2S2 😭, but I will be at #ACL2025 in Vienna ☕️ next week!!

Please spread the word that I'm recruiting prospective PhD students: lucy3.notion.site/for-prospect...

For Prospective PhD Students

I’m recruiting PhD students who will begin their degree in Fall 2026! I am an incoming assistant professor at Wisconsin-Madison’s Computer Sciences department, and my research focuses on natural langu...

lucy3.notion.site

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Jul 1

Congrats David!

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Jun 21

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.

Jennifer Serventi @jenserventi.bsky.social · Jun 13

*sigh* It's too soon, but on the day of his retirement from public service, I think that it's important to recognize the contributions of Brett Bobley to the work of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the field. #ThanksBrett for your leadership, your good cheer & your home-baked goods.

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Jun 21

And the Städel museum in Frankfurt is a new favorite

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Jun 21

Thank you all for being such kind hosts! @evelyngius.bsky.social @jberenike.bsky.social @fotisjannidis.bsky.social @sobchuk.bsky.social

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Jun 21

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.

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Kent K. Chang @kentkchang.bsky.social · Jun 4

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)

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · May 28

Our class was so much the better with you a part of it, thanks for all of your amazing work! Congrats on the award and have fun at DAIR!!

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · May 27

That was a nailbiter! (Rooting for okc now that our warriors are out)

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Lucy Li @lucy3.bsky.social · May 5

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

Wisconsin-Madison's tree-filled campus, next to a big shiny lake

A computer render of the interior of the new computer science, information science, and statistics building. A staircase crosses an open atrium with visibility across multiple floors

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Journal of Cultural Analytics @culturalanalytics.bsky.social · Apr 9

📚 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...

Racial and Ethnic Representation in Literature Taught in US High Schools | Published in Journal of Cultural Analytics

By Li Lucy, Camilla Griffiths & 7 more. We quantify the representation, or presence, of characters of color in English Language Arts instruction in the United States to better understand possible raci...

culturalanalytics.org

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Reposted by David Bamman

David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · Apr 6

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.

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David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Mar 21

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!

David Bamman @dbamman.bsky.social · Mar 21

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

Bellwether Postdoctoral Scholar - School of Information

University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

aprecruit.berkeley.edu

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