Associate Professor
Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia
laura.k.nelson@ubc.ca
About
Laura K. Nelson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia and is the inaugural Director of the Centre for Computational Social Science. Laura’s research interests include: collective behavior and social movements, culture, collective identity, computational methods and computational social science.
Selected Publications
- Than, Nga, Leanne Fan, Tina Law, Laura K. Nelson, and Leslie McCall. 2025. “Updating ‘The Future of Coding’: Qualitative Coding with Generative Large Language Models.” Sociological Methods & Research. Advance online publication.
- Lee, Ye Joon, Brayden G. King, and Laura Nelson. 2024. “Activists’ Strategic Interactions, Collaborative Tactics, and Local Environmental Performance.” Academy of Management Proceedings. doi:10.5465/AMPROC.2024.17135.
- King, Brayden G., and Laura K. Nelson. 2023. “Beyond Protests: Using Computational Text Analysis to Explore a Greater Variety of Social Movement Activities.” Pp. 13–35 in Methodological Advances in Research on Social Movements, Conflict, and Change, Vol. 47, edited by Thomas V. Maher and Eric W. Schoon. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited.
- Nelson, Laura K. 2021. “Cycles of Conflict, a Century of Continuity: The Impact of Persistent Place-Based Political Logics on Social Movement Strategy.” American Journal of Sociology 127(1):1–59.
- Nelson, Laura K., and Brayden G. King. 2020. “The Meaning of Action: Linking Goals, Tactics, and Strategies in the Environmental Movement.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 25(3):315–338.
Current Research Projects
- AI for Cultural and Historical Reasoning (Schmidt Sciences funding).