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 an assistant professor of sociology at Northeastern University. I am also core faculty at the NULab for Text, Maps, and Networks, I'm a Faculty Affiliate at the Network Science Institute, I'm on the Executive Committee of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and I'm on the Editorial Board of Signs.
Recent Publications:
- Nelson, Laura K., Derek Burk, Marcel Knudsen, and Leslie McCall. 2018 "The Future of Coding: A Comparison of Hand-Coding and Three Types of Computer-Assisted Text Analysis Methods." Sociological Methods and Research.
- Nelson, Laura K. 2017. "Computational Grounded Theory: A Methodological Framework." Sociological Methods and Research. You can still find the non-proof version here.
- Nelson, Laura K. 2018. “‘Feminism Means More Than a Changed World...It Means the Creation of a New Consciousness in Women': Feminism, Consciousness-Raising, and Continuity Between the Waves.” Pp. 175-197 in 100 Years of the Nineteenth Amendment: An Appraisal of Women's Political Activism, edited by Holly J. McCammon and Lee Ann Banasak. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Crossley, Alison Dahl and Laura K. Nelson.* 2018. “Feminists Reshaping Gender.” Chapter in Springer Handbook of the Sociology of Gender, edited by Barbara Risman, Carissa Froyum, and William Scarborough. New York: Springer Press. *listed alphabetically, equal co-authors
Recent and Upcoming Talks:
- December 7: "Finding Simple Patterns in Complex Data," TextXD, Berkeley Institute on Data Science.
- November 1: "The Future of Coding," Working Group on Computational Social Science, Columbia University.
- October 17: “Machine Learning is Feminist,” All Boats Rise? Social Capital, Promise and Peril. A one-day, invitation only gathering of scholars, activists, and leaders, Amazon HQ.
Find me on:
Github: lknelson
Twitter: @LauraK_Nelson