Lauren F. Klein

Timeline

1. By 2011

   Harvard and a CUNY doctorate

   She studies comparative literature and computer science at Harvard and works as a software developer and bike messenger before graduate school. She earns a PhD in English and American Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY, in 2011.

2. By 2017

   Digital Humanities Lab at Georgia Tech

   She joins Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Media, and Communication as an assistant professor, teaches in the Computational Media program and founds the Digital Humanities Lab. The lab's Shape of History project brings new attention to a forgotten nineteenth-century data visualization scheme by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and Inside Higher Ed names her one of the rising stars of digital humanities in 2017.

3. 2018–2022

   Writing Data Feminism

   In 2018, she and Catherine D'Ignazio, then at Emerson College, receive an American Council of Learned Societies Collaborative Research Fellowship to write Data Feminism for the MIT Press. Published in 2020, the book offers seven principles for examining and challenging unequal power in data science, and it wins the 2022 MLA Prize for Collaborative, Bibliographical, or Archival Scholarship.

4. 2019–2022

   Associate professor at Emory

   She joins Emory University in 2019 as an associate professor of English and Quantitative Theory and Methods and applies quantitative methods to 19th-century abolitionist newspapers. The University of Minnesota Press publishes her book An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States in 2020, and Emory names her Winship Distinguished Research Professor of English and Quantitative Theory and Methods in 2022.

5. April 2023

   The Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network

   In April 2023, the Mellon Foundation awards $1.3 million to Emory, Clark Atlanta University, Georgia Tech and the DataedX Group to create the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI (AIAI) Network, with Klein as principal investigator. The network blends humanistic ways of thinking with machine-learning methods to make Atlanta a hub for work on AI, ethics and social justice.

6. 2023–2024

   Chronos Fellowship for Data by Design

   She holds Emory College's 2023–2024 Chronos Faculty Fellowship and uses it to write Data by Design, an interactive digital book for the MIT Press that charts the history of data visualization from the European Enlightenment to today.

7. May 2024

   Data Feminism for AI

   In May 2024, she and D'Ignazio release Data Feminism for AI, a paper for the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT). It rearticulates the principles of Data Feminism for AI research and proposes two new principles on environmental impact and consent.

8. 2026

   A second Mellon grant

   In September 2026, the Mellon Foundation awards Emory $1.8 million to expand the AIAI Network, with Klein, Winship Distinguished Research Professor of English and Data & Decision Sciences, as principal investigator. She also directs the Emory Digital Humanities Lab. The MIT Press publishes her book Data by Design: Visualization and Power from Abolition to the Dawn of Data Science in October 2026.