Events
Past Event
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Oscar Stuhler, Northwestern University "Studying Textual Representations of Social Structures"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Speaker:
Oscar Stuhler, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
Title:
Studying Textual Representations of Social Structures
Abstract:
Textual data contain rich accounts of actions taken by different actors, of relationships, and of particular identities’ attributes. In other words, texts contain representations of social structures. Sociology has a long tradition of formally studying such structures. However, with the embrace of computational text analysis, sociologists' focus has shifted from grammar-based approaches to ones based on co-occurrence, such as word embeddings. Time to bring grammar back in! In this talk, I will first present a framework for extracting grammatically structured information like the above from text. I then show how this allows us to study larger discursive patterns by presenting both past and ongoing research. In particular, I will be talking about gender and agency in fiction writing (1850-2010) and contending conceptions of refugees in German news. I will close with some work in progress that leverages generative large language models to extend this ongoing research program.
Speaker Bio:
Oscar Stuhler is a sociologist studying discourse with formal, quantitative methods. Much of his work focuses on how to measure, analyze, and theorize textual representations of social structures. Oscar is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University’s Department of Sociology. He completed his PhD in sociology at New York University.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/93590489365
Passcode: NICO24
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
No classes - Memorial Day - University offices are closed
University Academic Calendar
All Day
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No classes - Memorial Day - University offices are closed
Time
Monday, May 25, 2026
Contact
Calendar
University Academic Calendar
Data Science Nights - MAY 2026 - Speaker: Xudong Tang, Computer Science and NICO
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
5:30 PM
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M416, Technological Institute
Details
MAY MEETING: Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 5:30pm (US Central)
LOCATION:
ESAM Conference Room, Tech M416
2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208
AGENDA:
5:30pm - Meet and greet with refreshments
6:00pm - Talk with Xudong Tang, PhD Student, Computer Science, NICO, and the Human-AI Collaboration Lab, Northwestern University
TALK TITLE:
Human and Machine Perception of Voice Similarity
ABSTRACT:
Modern voice cloning systems generate synthetic speech that listeners frequently cannot identify as being synthetic. But a voice can sound natural without sounding like the intended person, and what determines whether a clone is heard as a particular person is an open question. Here we report a large-scale preregistered experiment in which we collected 92,239 responses from 175 participants on their perception of pairs of real recordings, voice clones, and continuously morphed voices drawn from 100 contemporary celebrities across 20 speaker groups. We find that voice clones do not reliably preserve perceived speaker identity, reducing same-speaker judgments by 12.7 percentage points even though the clones are produced by a state-of-the-art text-to-speech model, while leaving different-speaker judgments unchanged. Using continuously morphed stimuli, we find that speakers vary substantially in how much variation their perceived identity tolerates, and that this variation is not predicted by speaker demographics. Speaker embeddings account for 58.9\% (95\% CI = [55.7, 61.9]) of variance in identity judgments, which is more than acoustic features, social attributes, and clone status combined. Once all these observed features are accounted for, clone status adds no additional predictive power. These results shows that the perceptual impact of voice cloning is positional rather than categorical: we can model how listeners judge a voice by how close it falls to the perceptual boundary that defines each speaker's recognizable voice, applying the same criterion to real and synthetic speech alike.
DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly meetings featuring presentations and discussions about data-driven science and complex systems, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Students and researchers of all levels are welcome! For more information: http://bit.ly/nico-dsn
FUTURE DATES:
Data Science Nights will return in September!
Time
Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
M416, Technological Institute Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
Spring 2026 Commencement
University Academic Calendar
All Day
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Spring 2026 Commencement
Time
Sunday, June 14, 2026
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Juneteenth - University Closed
University Academic Calendar
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Juneteenth - University Closed
Time
Friday, June 19, 2026
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University Academic Calendar
Independence Day (observed) - University Closed
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All Day
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Independence Day (observed) - University Closed
Time
Friday, July 3, 2026
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Fall 2026 Classes Begin
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All Day
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Fall 2026 Classes Begin
Time
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
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