Writing

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

  • As February ends, I’m thinking about…

    • “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.”

  • Reading through the pandemic: A year (and a bit) in review

    • “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.”

  • Context is king: A prediction about the future of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots.

    “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

  • Large language models (LLMs): Risks and policy implications, in the MIT Science Policy Review
  • Forthcoming from Routledge: DEEP LITERACY, DIGITAL TIME

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    Women of Letters

  • How writing could be: An interview with Elisa Gabbert
  • Ourselves, each other, and the world around us: An interview with Noreen Masud
  • Pack light and listen deeply: An interview with Cass Marketos
  • To live many different lives: An interview with Ayşegül Savaş
  • So much that we’re not able to see: An interview with Iris Jamahl Dunkle
  • Humming, crackling, and expanding: An interview with Frances Dickey
  • A place in the larger world: An interview with Jenna Butler
  • So many words not in the dictionary: An interview with Nancy K. Miller
  • Paying attention: An interview with Sheila Liming
  • Harbor your own dreams: An interview with Beth Kephart
  • To feel and think and know: An interview with Miranda Dunham-Hickman
  • Not a person but a landscape: An interview with Kasia Van Schaik

    • 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.