Sandrine Chausson

Hello! My name is Sandrine and I'm a final-year PhD student in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, where I am part of the SMASH research group and the Institute of Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC). My PhD research, supervised by Dr Björn Ross, focuses on developing computational text analysis and data science methods for inductive social science research and applies these to investigating the dynamics of collective sense-making processes on social media.

In parallel to my PhD, I am also a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield in the School of Information, Journalism and Communication, where I work with Dr Sara Torsner on the ESRC-funded research project Profiling impunity for human rights violations against journalists: A systematic account of state-based harm and practices of resistance.

With a background in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of York and Computer Science from Imperial College London, my technical expertise lies in applied Natural Language Processing using Large Language Models and Machine Learning. My research, with its focus on theory, mixed-methods and interdisciplinarity, contributes to the fields of sociology, cultural studies, political science and communication. Throughout my academic journey, I have collaborated with institutions such as the Alan Turing Institute, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), the University of California Berkeley, and the Queensland University of Technology. I am also a dedicated educator, having worked as Teaching Fellow and Teaching Assistant at the University of Edinburgh, where I co-created, organised and delivered interdisciplinary social data science related MSc courses at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and supervised several undergraduate and master's students.