Laura K. Nelson

Laura K. Nelson

Assistant Professor of Sociology

University of British Columbia

Biography

I’m an assistant professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia. See this Q&A for more on my research, teaching, and what I hope to accomplish at UBC.

Previously, I was an assistant professor at Northeastern University, where I was core faculty at the NULab for Text, Maps, and Networks, a faculty affiliate at the Network Science Institute, and was a member of the executive committee of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.

I use computational methods to study social movements, culture, gender, institutions, and the history of feminism. I’m particularly interested in developing transparent and reproducible text analysis methods for sociology using open-source tools.

I’m on the editorial board of Sociological Methodology and a consulting editor and ad hoc deputy editor at the American Journal of Sociology.

Interests
  • social movements
  • gender
  • computational sociology
  • text analysis
  • culture
  • institutions
Education

  • PhD in Sociology

    University of California, Berkeley

  • MA in Sociology

    University of California, Berkeley

  • BA in Sociology with a Concentration in Analysis and Research

    University of Wisconsin, Madison

Skills

Python

R

Linux

Professional Appointments

 
 
 
 
 
University of British Columbia
Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of British Columbia
Jul 2021 – Present Vancouver, BC
  • Director - Centre for Computational Social Science
 
 
 
 
 
Northeastern University
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Northeastern University
Aug 2016 – Jun 2021 Massachusetts
  • Core Faculty - NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks
  • Executive Committee - Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program
  • Affiliated Faculty - Network Science Institute
 
 
 
 
 
University of California, Berkeley
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of California, Berkeley
Aug 2016 – Aug 2017 California
  • Research Fellow - Berkeley Institute for Data Science
  • Research and Teaching Fellow - Digital Humanities @ Berkeley
 
 
 
 
 
Northwestern University
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Northwestern University
Aug 2014 – Aug 2016 Illinois
  • Research Fellow - Kellogg School of Management
  • Research Affiliate - Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems

Publications

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All Methods Social Movements Gender Intersectionality
The Inequality of Intersectionalities in Chicago’s First-Wave Women’s Movement
This article uses network and text analyses methods to reexamine the intersections of race, class, gender, and ethnicity in first-wave feminist organizations in Chicago during the Progressive Era, from 1860 to 1920.
Laura K. Nelson
PDF Cite DOI
The Inequality of Intersectionalities in Chicago’s First-Wave Women’s Movement
And the Rest is History: Measuring the Scope and Recall of Wikipedia’s Coverage of Three Women’s Movement Subgroups
Narrating history is perpetually contested, shaping and reshaping how nations and people understand both their pasts and the current moment. Measuring and evaluating the scope of histories is methodologically challenging. In this paper we provide a general approach and a specific method to measure historical recall.
Laura K. Nelson, Rebekah Getman, Syed Arefinul Haque
PDF Cite Code DOI
And the Rest is History: Measuring the Scope and Recall of Wikipedia’s Coverage of Three Women’s Movement Subgroups
Leveraging the Alignment Between Machine Learning and Intersectionality: Using Word Embeddings to Measure Intersectional Experiences of the Nineteenth Century U.S. South
I empirically demonstrate the alignment between machine learning and inductive research through a word embedding model of first-person narratives of the nineteenth-century U.S. South.
Laura K. Nelson
PDF Cite Code DOI
Leveraging the Alignment Between Machine Learning and Intersectionality: Using Word Embeddings to Measure Intersectional Experiences of the Nineteenth Century U.S. South
Cycles of Conflict, a Century of Continuity: The Impact of Persistent Place-Based Political Logics on Social Movement Strategy
Using a combination of network analysis, computational text analysis, and qualitative interpretation, the author examines women’s movement discourses across the first and second waves of activism and between two sites, New York City and Chicago. Place, she finds, serves to capture differences in political logics that generate durable differences within movement discourse.
Laura K. Nelson
PDF Cite DOI
Cycles of Conflict, a Century of Continuity: The Impact of Persistent Place-Based Political Logics on Social Movement Strategy
From Theory to Practice and Back: How the Concept of Implicit Bias was Implemented in Academe, and What this Means for Gender Theories of Organizational Change
Using an inductive, theory-building approach and combination of computational and qualitative methods, we investigate how the concept of implicit bias was translated into practice through the ADVANCE program and identify five key features that made implicit bias useful as a change framework in the academic STEM setting.
Laura K. Nelson, Kathrin Zippel
PDF Cite DOI
From Theory to Practice and Back: How the Concept of Implicit Bias was Implemented in Academe, and What this Means for Gender Theories of Organizational Change
The Future of Coding: A Comparison of Hand-Coding and Three Types of Computer-Assisted Text Analysis Methods
This article compares three common computer-assisted approaches—dictionary, supervised machine learning, and unsupervised machine learning—to those produced through a rigorous hand-coding analysis of inequality in the news.
Laura K. Nelson, Derek Burk, Marcel Knudsen, Leslie McCall
PDF Cite Code DOI
The Future of Coding: A Comparison of Hand-Coding and Three Types of Computer-Assisted Text Analysis Methods
The Meaning of Action: Linking Goal Orientations, Tactics, and Strategies in the Environmental Movement
Using the U.S. environmental movement as a case study, and employing a data-driven and inductive strategy that combines both computational and qualitative methods, we find that strategy emerges as organizations link their actions to their goal orientation: what level of society the organization views as the locus of change.
Laura K. Nelson, Brayden G King
PDF Cite DOI
The Meaning of Action: Linking Goal Orientations, Tactics, and Strategies in the Environmental Movement
Computational Grounded Theory: A Methodological Framework
This article proposes a three-step methodological framework called computational grounded theory, which combines expert human knowledge and hermeneutic skills with the processing power and pattern recognition of computers, producing a more methodologically rigorous but interpretive approach to content analysis.
Laura K. Nelson
PDF Cite Code DOI
Computational Grounded Theory: A Methodological Framework

Courses and Workshops

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All Courses Workshops Methods Data and Society Theory
Analyzing Complex Digitized Data
Introduction to Python for the social sciences and humanities
PDF
Analyzing Complex Digitized Data
Bostonography
The City through Data, Texts, Maps, and Networks
PDF
Bostonography
Computational Text Analysis for Humanists and Social Scientists
Material for a 3 day workshop on computational text analysis for humanists and social scientists
Code
Computational Text Analysis for Humanists and Social Scientists
Digital Humanities at Berkeley Summer Institute: Computational Text Analysis
Teaching material for a 2017 workshop in computational text analysis for humanists (and social scientists)
Code
Digital Humanities at Berkeley Summer Institute: Computational Text Analysis
Encoding and Decoding when Working with Text
A short lesson on teaching text encoding to non-CS majors
Code
Encoding and Decoding when Working with Text
Foundations of Social Theory II
Contemporary Social Theory, Graduate Level
PDF
Foundations of Social Theory II

Select Talks

Cycles of Conflict, a Century of Continuity: Computational Methods and the Longue Durée
Using computational methods to examine women’s movements from the 1860s to the 1970s, I challenge long-standing theories of feminist waves and reflect on the potential for using computational methods, in particular when combined with qualitative methods and interpretation, to re-examine historical patterns in social movements over long time frames.
Sep 9, 2022 9:00 PM — 10:30 PM Indiana University Workshop in Methods
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Cycles of Conflict, a Century of Continuity: Computational Methods and the Longue Durée
Partial Perspectives and Situated Knowledge: Radical Objectivity using Computational Methods
In this talk I propose that, despite its claims to elevate social science to the level of the physical sciences, the social physics perspective as it is currently practiced produces a decidedly unscientific and unobjective approach to social science.
Dec 14, 2021 2:00 PM — 3:00 PM DSI Distinguished Speaker Series, Columbia University
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Partial Perspectives and Situated Knowledge: Radical Objectivity using Computational Methods
Leveraging Machine Learning to Measure Intersectionality
I empirically demonstrate the alignment between machine learning and inductive analysis through a word embedding model of first-person narratives of the nineteenth-century U.S. South.
Mar 8, 2021 8:15 PM — 9:15 PM Harvard University, Inequality & Social Policy Seminar
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Leveraging Machine Learning to Measure Intersectionality

Online Posts & Media

How do we nurture an academic landscape that is more accessible to women? Let’s start by getting rid of the in-person interview
In the lead up to International Women’s Day on Friday March 8th, SAGE Ocean posed a series of questions to leading academics. In this post I explores how we nurture an academic landscape that is more accessible to women.
Read the Full Essay
How do we nurture an academic landscape that is more accessible to women? Let’s start by getting rid of the in-person interview
The Computation/Context Trade-Off?
In this blog post I explore a fundamental question in computational social science: does “big computation” necessarily comes at the expense of narrative richness, contextual detail, and theory? Or, conversely, narrative richness can only happen without computation?
Read the Full Essay
The Computation/Context Trade-Off?
Developing a Feel It, Touch It, Smell It Analytics
Rather than simply calling for diversity within the field of data analytics on terms dictated by this “new ‘Old Boy Network’ of Ivy Leaguers,” we should instead make big data, and data analytics, work on our own terms. I believe we can develop a data analytics that helps us touch, smell, and feel the game (and the social world).
Read the Full Essay
Developing a Feel It, Touch It, Smell It Analytics
Feminism, Culture, and Computational Sociology
To give a taste of my research agenda I highlight below a few of my findings and methods, ending with hopes for future research along these lines.
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Feminism, Culture, and Computational Sociology
Text as Data: A Call to Standardize Access and Training
Data come in all shapes and sizes, but in the past ten years we have seen huge leaps in the amount of data readily available in the form of unstructured or semi-structured text. This presents both opportunities and challenges for social science researchers, including social movements scholars.
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Text as Data: A Call to Standardize Access and Training
Computer-Assisted Content Analysis and Sociology: What You Should Know
In this blog post I address two common critiques of computational text analysis, as they are articulated by Andrew Perrin, in his review of the Poetics special issue on topic modelling.
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Computer-Assisted Content Analysis and Sociology: What You Should Know

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