Announced in 2025, the UC Berkeley School of Information’s Bellwether Postdoctoral Scholar Program is a two-year postdoctoral scholarship supporting promising early-career researchers across information disciplines. Part of Dean Eric Meyer’s vision to position the I School as a true bellwether — a leader that anticipates and shapes what's to come — the program advances future-facing research with impact on campus, for the public, and globally.
Scholars will give guest lectures and public talks about their research, organize public talks for others, and participate in the research life of the school. They will also work with faculty members in related research areas, collaborating on faculty research programs and publications as well conducting their own research.
Meet the scholars:
Dang Nguyen
Dang Nguyen is a researcher working with Dean Meyer. Their research examines the sociotechnological infrastructures of AI, especially through the intersection of informal automation, digital labour, and infrastructural reuse. They are currently focused on the concept of Tinkering, which addresses ambitious questions about the nature and practice of technology and society. Most recently, they were a research fellow at Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).
Denis Peskoff
Denis Peskoff studies natural language processing (NLP), where he leverages domain experts to create accurate datasets for computational social science. By doing so, he ensures that the datasets being used to train NLP models are less-biased, meaningful, and grounded in real-world expertise. Prior to the I School, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University. He will be working with Professor Diag Davenport.
Nel Escher
Nel Escher is a scholar interested in computational legal systems, public service automation, and algorithmic auditing. In their current research, they are looking into how government officials should evaluate products with large language model-enabled features. Prior to the I School, Nel completed their doctorate at the University of Michigan. They will be supervised by Professor Deirdre Mulligan.
Svenja Guhr
Svenja Guhr’s work is rooted in computational literary studies, including topics such as machine learning, multilingual digital text analysis, responsible computing, and privacy by design. Currently, she is working on a project to operationalize “suspense” in British and American short fiction. Svenja joins the I School from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, where she was a research associate and lecturer. She will be working with Professor David Bamman and his research team—the Bamman Group.
The I School is currently seeking the next cohort of Bellwether Postdoctoral Scholars. If you are an early-career researcher working at the intersection of information, technology, and society, we encourage you to apply.
