Writing
As a computational social scientist, most of my work takes place in professional settings with limited public access.
This page brings together some of my favourite pieces from public-facing projects.
Blog posts
This month’s recommended reading includes an essay by Kyle Chayka and recent work from Laurie Woolever.
“One thing I’ve learned, over the course of my career, is that you never know when someone from your professional past will later come to play a role in your professional present.”
“The challenge, when it came to realizing my longer-term goals, had mostly been that although they were important to me in the long run their benefits were both largely intangible and relatively far in the future.”
This month’s recommended reading includes an essay by Alexander Chee and recent work from Anthropic.
“Too often, there’s an expectation that a mentor will offer a clear-cut answer, a distinctly measurable outcome, or some piece of advice that will be immediately actionable. In reality, it’s a lot of gradually piecing together little bits of insight that, on their own, don’t necessarily look like much.”
“You don’t have to do it all yourself, but you will almost certainly have to be the one who at least gets the ball rolling by putting yourself forward for consideration in some way.”
“I was once offered a job I hadn’t applied to, from a person I didn’t know, because I’d been recommended for the position by another person I didn’t know. What connection did they have to me or my work? Our only exchange had been a single cold email I’d sent.”
“Over the years, I’ve lived, worked, and studied in many different countries, using several different languages. I’ve lived in big cities, and I’ve lived in small ones; I’ve lived in places whose names anybody would know, and I’ve lived in places that few have ever heard of. What these experiences have taught me is that amazing people are not a finite resource.”
“It was the middle of PhD application season, and I had recently been admitted to the PhD in English programs at Oxford and at Cambridge. The next step in the progression of this decision-making process was to buy my plane tickets to the UK, where I was scheduled to attend the welcome day events for newly admitted students at each university.”
“Why, then, would OpenAI use the term ‘remember’ to describe what ChatGPT is capable of doing? I suspect that, in part, it’s a gesture towards a future in which ChatGPT has undergone significant improvements in contextual capability.”
Academic writing
Women of Letters
Jana M. Perkins is a computational social scientist. An award-winning scholar, her research has been federally funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada since 2019. She is the founder of Women of Letters, a longform interview series celebrating women’s paths to professional success. Together with Miranda Dunham-Hickman, she is co-authoring a book that will be published by Routledge.
To learn more about Perkins and her latest work, visit jcontd.com or follow her on Bluesky.