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General Information

Full Name Dr. Jessica Witte
Contact Address Centre for Data, Culture and Society · Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh, 1 Lauriston Pl, Edinburgh, EH3 9EF
Phone 07514 233952
Email jessica.witte@ed.ac.uk
GitHub www.github.com/jessicawitte92

Education

  • 2022
    PhD, English Literature
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    • {"Supervisor"=>"Prof. Robert Markley"}
    • {"Thesis"=>"The Fasting Girl: A Literary, Digital and Medical History of Anorexia from the Novel to the Clinic (1740-1900)"}
  • 2016
    MA, English Literature
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    • Focus on Victorian Literature and Culture
  • 2014
    BA, English
    Hanover College
    • Secondary studies in Spanish and Women & Gender Studies

Employment

  • 2024-present
    Digital Research Analyst
    Centre for Data, Culture and Society, University of Edinburgh
  • 2024
    Postdoctoral Research Fellow
    School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
  • 2022-2024
    Postdoctoral Research Fellow
    School of Literatures, Languages & Cultures, University of Edinburgh
  • 2021-2022
    Predoctoral Fellow
    Humanities Research Institute, University of Illinois
  • 2018-2021
    Teaching Assistant
    Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois
  • 2017-2018
    Research Assistant
    School of Library and Information Sciences, University of Illinois
  • 2016-2021
    Instructor
    Department of English, University of Illinois

Publications

  • 2024
    Political uses of the ancient past on social media are predominantly negative and extreme
  • 2020
    The 'Welsh Fasting Girls' and Anorexia Nervosa in the Victorian Medical Imagination
  • 2020
    NovelTM Datasets for English-Language Fiction, 1700-2009

Media Exposure

{"title"=>"Interviewee, upcoming documentary segment on the 'Welsh Fasting Girls'", "production"=>"Invitation au Voyage, ARTE Network", "year"=>2024}{"title"=>"'Literary Studies in the Digital Age' interview", "platform"=>"Edinburgh Futures Institute", "year"=>2023, "url"=>"https://efi.ed.ac.uk/literary-studies-in-the-digital-age"}

Fellowships and Grants

  • 2021-2022
    Predoctoral Fellowship, Humanities Research Institute
  • 2020-2021
    Lauter-McDougall Fellowship, University of Illinois
  • 2018-2020
    College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Fellowship, University of Illinois
  • 2014-2015
    Roxanne J. Decyk Fellowship, University of Illinois

Awards

  • 2023
    Prize for best PhD Thesis in English Literature
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • 2018
    Undergraduate Teaching Award
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • 2016-2019
    Directory of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students with an Additional Commendation of 'Outstanding' (Top 10%)
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Conference Activity

  • Generative AI for Heritage Institutions
  • Measuring the Rise and Fall of a Subreddit using Text Analytics: The Life Course of r/Antiwork
  • Developing Capacity for Post-API Research: New Frameworks for Social Media Data Acquisition

Teaching Experience

  • 2024
    Scraping Websites with R
    University of Edinburgh
  • 2023-2024
    Legal & Ethical Issues in Web Scraping
    University of Edinburgh
  • 2023
    Stream 2: Text & Data Analysis in the Wild (R)
    University of Edinburgh
  • 2023
    Working with OCR (Python)
    University of Edinburgh
  • 2023
    Topic Modelling (Python, R)
    University of Edinburgh

Mentoring

  • 2024-present
    Postgraduate Students
    Heritage Minds Lab, University of Edinburgh
  • 2022-2024
    Postgraduate Projects
    University of Edinburgh
  • 2017-2019
    Undergraduate Projects
    Department of English, University of Illinois

Professional Development

  • May-July 2023
    Data Science and AI Educator’s Programme
    The Alan Turing Institute
  • 2020-2022
    English Language and Composition Exam Reader
    College Board (USA)

Academic Service

  • 2024-present
    AI Taskforce
    School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
  • 2024
    CDCS Digital Research Prizes, Judge
    University of Edinburgh
  • 2023
    CDCS Steering Committee, Board Member
    University of Edinburgh
  • 2023
    Research Technology Support, CDCS Rapid Prototyping Sandpit
    University of Edinburgh

Languages

Technical Skills