Blending Humanistic Inquiry and Technology, Carnegie Mellon Leads a New Era of Cultural Study and Research
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Making a big bet on “computational humanities,” Carnegie Mellon University will introduce new academic programs and resources for students and researchers to blend traditional humanistic inquiry — literary interpretation, historical research and cultural critique — with computational methods like computer vision, machine learning, network analysis and data visualization.
“Carnegie Mellon University is the perfect place to lead a new era in computational humanities. We’re not replacing humanistic thinkers with computers in any sense. The humanists will remain solidly in the driver’s seat — they will pose the questions and develop the theories. We are catalyzing interdisciplinary research to empower the humanities in ways that Carnegie Mellon is uniquely capable of doing,” said Richard Scheines(opens in new window), Bess Family Dean of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences(opens in new window). “Our faculty are already shaping this emerging field, and the world needs graduates who can think critically and work across disciplines to understand and improve the human condition.”
Starting in fall 2026, Carnegie Mellon’s Department of English will welcome its first cohort of students in a new Ph.D. in Computational Cultural Studies(opens in new window) program. The first doctoral program of its kind, the Computational Cultural Studies program will offer courses in both literary and cultural analysis and computational methods such as mapping, network analysis or VR‐based interpretation. The program, which is accepting applications through Jan. 7, 2026, welcomes individuals from a range of disciplines, including humanities graduates drawn to computational approaches and STEM, arts or social science majors with a strong foundation in humanities research.
In a September interview with Inside Higher Ed(opens in new window), Chris Warren, head of the Department of English(opens in new window) and a leading figure in computational humanities, noted students often do best on the job market “when they have the winds of the institutions at their backs.”
“Carnegie Mellon’s broader reputation in artificial intelligence and data science was the kind of thing people expected from our Ph.D. students anyway, though it hadn’t been baked into our curriculum. So, we really wanted to lean into the reputation that the university already had and support students to make the most out of the full environment here,” Warren said.
An interdisciplinary hiring initiative complements the new degree program. The university is hiring at least two tenure- or teaching-track faculty in computational humanities, seeking scholars with expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data modelling, computational linguistics and cultural analytics.
How Does the CMU Environment Make This Possible?
For years, computational humanities scholars have benefited from resources and expertise within Carnegie Mellon University Libraries(opens in new window). By formalizing this partnership, scholars will be able to access support for data modelling, text and network analysis, visualization and machine-learning engagements.
“This partnership represents the kind of collaborative social and technical infrastructure that 21st-century humanities scholarship requires. By bringing together the Libraries' strengths in research data services, digital collections, publishing and open knowledge systems with Dietrich College's disciplinary expertise, we're creating an environment where students can harness computational methods to deepen humanistic inquiry,” said Nicky Agate(opens in new window), associate dean for academic engagement in the University Libraries and editorial director for Carnegie Mellon University Press(opens in new window).
Agate, who headed up libraries-based digital humanities teams at University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and the Modern Language Association before coming to CMU in 2023, is also excited to see potential collaborations between the University Press and computational humanities scholars, whereby expansive CMU projects such as Six Degrees of Francis Bacon(opens in new window) could become peer-reviewed digital publications of the University Press.
University Libraries has designated a physical space in Hunt Library for the burgeoning computational humanities community of practice, which will allow students and faculty alike to learn from each other in a studio-like environment, find collaborators, take methods workshops and host events.
In addition, seed grants offered through The Humanities Center(opens in new window) are making more computational humanities projects possible. The 2025 cohort includes Uju Anya(opens in new window), an associate professor in the Department of Languages, Cultures & Applied Linguistics(opens in new window) and her project, the AfroMetaverse Digital Platform(opens in new window). The platform helps to uplift Afrodescendants and prioritizes their successful participation in language education. There are three main components: a VR multilingual educational gaming platform, a social networking community and a repository of multilingual interaction data for interdisciplinary research.
By collaborating with librarians, computer scientists, statisticians and designers, Carnegie Mellon humanities scholars are advancing the study of culture, society and the human experience.
History of Computational Humanities at CMU
The rise of computational humanities at CMU builds on a history of interdisciplinary partnerships, grants and innovations that have enabled humanities scholars to leverage digital tools for discovery.
“The combination of deep disciplinary knowledge in the humanities with computational tools that treat culture as a data‐rich environment is the hallmark of this field,” Warren said. “CMU is ideally positioned to lead the next generation of humanities research.”
Here is a sample of milestones and projects:
English faculty unveil the Six Degrees of Francis Bacon
One hallmark project is “Six Degrees of Francis Bacon(opens in new window),” led by Warren, a digital social-network reconstruction of early modern British cultural networks which allowed users to explore and contribute to data-driven visualizations of historical relationships. All of the relationship and network data is downloadable to scholars interested in early modernity. By making the site’s code open source available on the publishing platform Github, Bacon’s architects can enable digital humanists in other fields to create new network visualizations using their own datasets.
Humanities Analytics (HumAn) minor gives students access to growing field
In 2017, the Department of English launched a minor in humanities analytics (HumAn),(opens in new window) developed to equip humanities students with technical skills and technologists with humanistic training. Classes that count towards the minor include: Coding for Humanists; Programming and Data Analysis for Social Scientists; Data Stories(opens in new window); Machine Learning in Practice; Methods in Humanities Analytics; Rhetoric, Science and the Public Sphere; and Statistical Graphics and Visualization.
National Endowment for the Humanities funds Shakespeare-VR and Print and Probability projects
In 2018, two CMU computational projects received grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Warren led the “Print and Probability” research group, which applied statistical analysis and machine learning to questions of early modern print attribution. Working in collaboration with CMU data scientists, the group developed computer vision models to analyze typefaces of 17th-century printed texts. Their methods helped identify the printers of “Areopagitica,”(opens in new window) John Milton’s famous 1644 defense of free speech.
In December 2025, Schmidt Sciences awarded the Print and Probability Project additional funding through its Humanities and AI Virtual Institute(opens in new window).
Shakespeare-VR(opens in new window) is led by Stephen Wittek(opens in new window), an associate professor in the Department of English. The project uses virtual reality to open up ways of exploring Shakespearean drama by allowing users to step into a recreated Elizabethan playhouse, perform alongside virtual actors and explore the theatrical world of early modern England. Shakespeare-VR combines historical accuracy with emerging technology so users can engage with Shakespeare’s work through active participation rather than passive observation.
Pulitzer Prize winner uses digitized pension files to uncover the history of enslaved people
Edda Fields-Black(opens in new window), professor of history and director of The Humanities Center, won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History(opens in new window) for her book “COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid and Black Freedom during the Civil War(opens in new window),” in which she utilized computational humanities techniques in her research. The book recounts the story of the Combahee River Raid from the perspectives of Harriet Tubman and the previously enslaved people who liberated themselves in the raid.
Fields-Black collaborated with genealogists from the International African American Museum’s Center for Family History and its digital archive of U.S. Colored Troops pension files(opens in new window). She also used census data, Freedmen’s Bank Account applications and slave holders’ documents to reconstruct family trees of men who enlisted in the Second South Carolina Volunteers after liberating themselves in the raid and their wives. Fields-Black explained in a 2024 New York Times op-ed(opens in new window) how projects to digitize large collections of once-difficult-to-access records are giving African American families and historians more opportunities to recover their lost pasts and rewrite the history of slavery.
Students immerse themselves in other cultures through The Kenner Room
Hosted by the Department of Languages, Cultures & Applied Linguistics, The Kenner Room is a versatile learning environment for supporting a curriculum that encourages creativity and engagement through advanced digital tools and media. Here, students can participate in hands-on projects that enhance their understanding and application of digital resources in language and cultural studies.
Under the direction of Stephan Caspar,(opens in new window) associate professor in media creation and multicultural studies, The Kenner Room offers a setting for research into the integration of extended reality (XR) in educational contexts, with a particular focus on language and cultural studies. The Kenner Room aims to advance pedagogical practices in the digital humanities by exploring the capabilities of XR, gathering insights from student and visitor interactions. Recently, The Kenner Room launched XRTC Creative Research Grants(opens in new window) in partnership with the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry (opens in new window)and Human-Computer Interaction Institute(opens in new window) to fund new immersive works by CMU faculty, staff and students.
Scholars analyze a century of journaling to identify common themes in Russophone diaries
Using computational humanities methods and traditional close reading, a CMU and University of Pittsburgh research team analyzed more than a thousand personal diaries(opens in new window) written in Russian from the early 20th century through the end of the Soviet era. They found that across vastly different historical, social and material contexts, diarists consistently returned to a familiar mix of themes, including introspection, routine cataloging and reflection on the diary as a literary object.
CMU’s Tatyana Gershkovich(opens in new window), associate professor of Russian Studies, and Simon DeDeo(opens in new window), professor of social and decision sciences, worked with Madeline Kehl, a 2019 Pitt graduate, to employ Semantic Collocational Clustering, a novel computational reading technique, to identify the implicit meanings that emerge around the Russian words for “diary” (“dnevnik” / “zapiski”) in the St. Petersburg-based Prozhito archive. This helped the researchers pinpoint where each author consciously reflected on the practice of diary-keeping.
DeDeo noted their research provides a window into the way people lived and recorded their lives over tumultuous decades. He said the commonality of themes across time “seems to be telling us something fundamental about how the mind handles memory and how writing changes and channels it.”
