Freshly out in @pnasnexus.org: "On the transmission of texts: Written cultures as complex systems" The first major publication of project @lostma.bsky.social , where we lay down our methodology for studying the transmission, evolution or disparition of texts. /1 #science 🧪

On the transmission of texts: Written cultures as complex systems

Abstract. Knowledge of past cultures relies heavily on surviving written material. Over the centuries, texts were copied, altered, and often lost, leaving

academic.oup.com

Small new paper ! 🎉 Genre is a problematic notion in CLS: bibliographically unstable, heterogeneously annotated, yet central to many experiments Our new #NLP4DH paper (ACL 2026) proposes a method to retrieve genre tags automatically in a huge novel archive, from a small seed list only.

Attending #ACL? Come join us at NLP4DH 2026 on Saturday from 10am to 5pm! Great selection of papers from across the DH & NLP spectrum this year. Schedule: www.nlp4dh.com/nlp4dh-2026/...

NLP4DH - Schedule

NLP4DH 2026 Schedule

nlp4dh.com

📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!

Our paper with Damien Tricoire & Julian Csapó discussing if Diderot was the author of anticolonial passages in 'Histoire des deux Indes' is out in DES! doi.org/10.61147/des... (1/6)

Ghostwriting and collective authorship in the Enlightenment: Diderot, d’Holbach’s coterie and the problem of authorship in Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes

In recent decades, researchers have developed enormous interest in the role of Denis Diderot in Guillaume-Thomas Raynal's major historiographical work, the <i>Histoire des deux Indes</i> (HDI). Schola...

doi.org

Happy to announce that our article 'The style of scorn: computationally operationalizing the relationship between anger and complexity in 'Ik Ga Leven' by Lale Gül' (together with @jorisvanzundert.bsky.social) is out now with Digital Scholarship in the Humanities! OA link: doi.org/10.1093/llc/...

Kicking off the second day of #MappingtheCanon, @jbarre.bsky.social tells us more about the link between genre traditions and the canon.

Let the mapping begin! #MappingtheCanon

PhDone ! 🎓 Immense gratitude to my jury (including @evelyngius.bsky.social @matthieuletourneux.bsky.social @tedunderwood.com ), my co-directors @tpoibeau.bsky.social & Thomas Conrad, and everyone who supported me along the way ❤️

Very excited about a very special event: in two weeks, some of the most interesting quantitative work on the literary canon and canon formation comes together in Darmstadt 🧵

🚨New paper alert!🚨 In our new paper with @oliviermorin.bsky.social, Rowan Hall, and Marie Halo published in the Journal of Language Evolution, we explored the relationship between word length and ambiguity on a large-cross linguistic dataset. 1/6

Je soutiens mon Doctorat le 5 juin à l'ENS à 14h, salle des Résistants (45 rue d'Ulm) : « Modéliser la littérature de genre. Méthodes computationnelles et évolution des genres dans la fiction de langue française » une aventure qui se termine ! 🎉

📢 CfP for #CHR2027 is out! Submissions on all aspects of computational humanities research welcome; all details available here: 2027.computational-humanities-research.org/cfp/ And yes, CHR2027 will take place a little later than usual. So you *could* start later… but we suggest starting now!

Google dropped 4 different Gemma open-weight models! I'm most excited that they're finally adopting a standard Apache 2.0 open source license. huggingface.co/collections/...

#jobklaxon PhD Fellowships available at @psl-univ.bsky.social! Come & work w/us in CultureLab (w/ @jbcamps.bsky.social @oliviermorin.bsky.social et al not bsky). Deadline 31/05 Starting 01/10 Duration 3 yrs (fixed-term employment with benefits) Salary: sad. www.culturelab.psl.eu/en/news-cult...

#jobklaxon 10 postdocs available at @psl-univ.bsky.social in #AI. Working language: English. Btw. #digitalhumanities also happen under the AI hype these days, so get in touch and walk by this very building on your way to work. Join me in being #touristatwork #juniorProfInParis

Out in Evolutionary Human Sciences! With @mikekestemont.bsky.social, @jbcamps.bsky.social, @remcosleiderink.bsky.social & Anne Chao New work on unseen species models for cult heritage to the question: how many stories were _shared_ between medieval French and Dutch literature? lnkd.in/exyAWtir

I'm on a 38(!)-author paper just published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, "Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology". We splice Schleiermacher and hermeneutic theory into AI debates, arguing AI are "context machines". www.frontiersin.org/journals/art...

Frontiers | Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology

Generative AI (GenAI) systems are increasingly recognized as cultural technologies, yet current evaluation frameworks often treat culture as a variable to be...

frontiersin.org

From time to time I mutter about a secret project that involves benchmarks and historical language models. Here's a formal announcement of the Schmidt Sciences grant. Other PIs include @dmimno.bsky.social , @lauraknelson.bsky.social, @andrewpiper.bsky.social, and @mattwilkens.bsky.social. And +

What is the relationship between memorization and generalization in AI? Is there a fundamental tradeoff? In infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/memorizati... I’ve reviewed some of the evolving perspectives on memorization & generalization in machine learning, from classic perspectives through LLMs.

Memorization vs. generalization in deep learning: implicit biases, benign overfitting, and more

Or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the memorization

infinitefaculty.substack.com

New article! "Toward an Ontological Representation of Fictional Characters" by @antoine-bourgois.bsky.social, me, @oseminck.bsky.social & @tpoibeau.bsky.social doi.org/10.1017/chr.... Nothing fancy here — only sweat & tears. 🧵

📢 Postulez aux masters en #humanitésnumériques de l'École des chartes - @psl-univ.bsky.social . L’École propose deux masters qui forment au traitement des sources (objets, textes, images) par les technologies numériques. Candidatures : 17 fév.-16 mars. ▶️ En savoir plus : https://urls.fr/tr9XN4

This call is currently open for a Humanistica-satellite event, that might interest people in computational humanities (and not only). It is supported by CultureLab and welcomes long papers as well as lightning talks and posters.

📢 CfP now open for the Computational Cultural Science Workshop (Paris, 18-19 May 2026) until 16 February. Topics of interest: *️⃣AI and cultural datasets *️⃣Theory-driven humanities research *️⃣Document-based modelling of historical and social processes *️⃣Cultural analytics 👉 c2s.sciencesconf.org

You like Automatic Text Recognition (ATR/OCR/HTR) ? You like challenges ? Well, we open a competition for ATR/OCR of medieval manuscripts, in cross-lingual & diachronic settings for the Latin script. 📆 20/01 Registration 📆 21/03 Test set released 📆 3/04 Deadline for results Link cmmhwr26.inria.fr

New Publication: "Understanding Conversational AI: Philosophy, Ethics, and Social Impact of Large Language Models" (270 pages, Ubiquity Press, open access). Feel free to read it and share it widely! www.ubiquitypress.com/books/m/10.5...

Amazing papers at #CHR2025; particularly enjoying the computational literary studies. An observation: questions about genre as a confounding factor seem to keep coming up. I do wonder if (and I'm also guilty of this) CLS can fixate on the x-axis of history and we ought to give genre more attention.

@jbarre.bsky.social, @oseminck.bsky.social, Antoine Bourgois, and @tpoibeau.bsky.social built a detective detector, tracing the different archetypes in French detective fiction #CHR2025

Luxembourg is a good place to talk about Canonicity with Yuri #chr2025

I added a new post on my research blog last week. I wanted to react to a post from Dan Cohen that I've seen circulating on BlueSky last week about Gemini 3, and figured I would add my critical 2 cents to the mix! alix-tz.github.io/phd/posts/025/

New article in #JCLS 4(1)! 🎉 Visser Solissa, van Cranenburgh & @fpianz.bsky.social present a model for detecting syuzhet—the ordering and disclosure of events that shape a narrative—and formalize event annotation in fiction across multiple languages. #CCLS25 #ComputationalNarratology

Event Detection between Literary Studies and NLP. A Survey, a Narratological Reflection, and a Case Study

Narrative structure in fiction relies on the strategic presentation of events, where the ordering and disclosure of information (syuzhet) shape reader engagement and tension. This study outlines a com...

doi.org