About

The Cultural Analytics Lab at UC Berkeley conducts research at the intersection of computation, critical theory, and literary history. Researchers in the lab use natural language processing, machine learning and network analysis to produce data-driven studies of cultural production (including literature, folklore, film and music) and other expressions of culture broadly defined (including social behavior online). The lab focuses on developing the core computational methodologies for reasoning about these domains in the study of cultural objects. The goal is twofold: to have critical theory inform the design of computational methods and to have computational methods inform critical theory. Current projects include developing methods and data in NLP optimized for literary texts (BookNLP/LitBank), examining social and aesthetic textual production in Latin America, developing tools for the study of Danish folklore, and exploring conspiracy theories online.