Click to examine my pores.

My name is Matthew Wilkens. I’m an associate professor of Information Science at Cornell University. I use quantitative and computational methods to study large-scale developments in literary and cultural history. My work has focused in particular on literary text mining, geolocation extraction, genre detection, and the cross-pollination of critical and social-scientific methods. For more info, you can see my CV and my Information Science department faculty page.

I am actively recruiting new PhD students. If you’re interested in data-driven approaches to cultural questions, especially those that involve machine learning and digital libraries, drop me a line to chat about opportunities in our group.

Before arriving at Cornell, I taught at Wayne State University and the University of Notre Dame. I previously held postdocs in American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis and at the Humanities Research Center at Rice. I trained in the Literature program at Duke with Fred Jameson and Barbara Herrnstein Smith; before that, I received an MA in English from Wisconsin, an MS in physical chemistry from Berkeley, and a BS in chemistry and philosophy from William & Mary.

In largely unrelated news, I was once a more serious runner than I am now. I have never been a good tennis player. Oh, and my last name has an ‘e’ in it: Wilkens. Everyone gets this wrong.

There’s more info about the purpose of this blog in this early post.

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You can use the form below to send me a message, or you can find full contact details on my faculty page. I’m also on Twitter (rarely).