Laura Chapot

Laura Chapot is a Neukom Postdoctoral Fellow in the Departments of German Studies and Digital Humanities. Her postdoctoral research combines literary studies with computational approaches to investigate how literature and computation formalize, process and distribute cultural knowledge and experiences, particularly as a means to navigate uncertainty. How do literature and computation complement and influence one another as ways of representing information? And how do these modes of representation affect understanding and interpretation? She investigates these questions by studying the co-evolution of literary and computational culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Laura's doctoral research deployed computational text analysis methods to analyze the concept and literature of decadence in turn-of-the-century Germany and Sweden. Laura is also developing a course on Computational Comparative Literature. This course examines the role culture and language plays in how computational practices are conceptualized and deployed. How are computational methods thought about and used across languages and cultures? How transferrable are computational text analysis methods across languages? And what are the possibilities and challenges raised by working with digitized texts and computational methods in modern languages and literatures? She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature (German and Scandinavian Studies) from the University of Edinburgh where she also completed a MSc in Comparative Literature, and a MA in Modern Languages and European Union Studies.