Laura Nelson

I am currently an assistant professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia.

I use computational methods – principally text analysis, natural language processing, machine learning, and network analysis techniques – to study social movements, culture, gender, and organizations and institutions. Substantively, my research has examined processes around the formation of collective identities and social movement strategy in feminist and environmental movements, continuities between cycles of activism, intersectionality, and gender inequality in entrepreneurship and STEM fields.

Methodologically, I have proposed frameworks to combine computational methods and machine learning with qualitative methods, including the computational grounded theory framework and leveraging the alignment between machine learning and intersectionality research paradigms.

I have developed and taught courses introducing undergraduate and graduate social science and humanities students to computational methods, undergraduate data science courses, and graduate-level sociological theory. I am currently co-PI on a large grant through the National Science Foundation (grant number 2000713) to study the spread of gender-equity ideas related to STEM fields through higher education networks.

I have published in the American Journal of Sociology, Gender & Society, Poetics, Mobilization: An International Quarterly, and Sociological Methods & Research, among other outlets. I'm currently on the editorial board of Sociological Methodology and an associate editor at EPJ Data Science.

Previously, I was an assistant professor of sociology 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 on the executive committee of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.

I was also a postdoctoral research fellow at Digital Humanities @ Berkeley, the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, and the Management and Organizations Department in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where I was a research affiliate at the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems.

I received my PhD and M.A. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. I received my B.A. with a Concentration in Analysis and Research from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

When I'm not being an academic I love to travel, hike, and run. I have been playing the violin since age 4 and am always looking for ways to keep that part of my life.

I was born and raised in Laramie, Wyoming, and there is still a lot of Wyoming in me: high altitude, cold-weather running is my preferred exercise, I snowboard whenever I can, and I'm happiest when I am high up with vast landscape views. In Wyoming, it's on mountains. In cities, I'll settle for tall buildings.