Meet Eug Xu, our Data Science & Society Research Assistant

What is the primary focus of your role in RDDS & Penn Libraries?

My role in RDDS focuses on efforts to help bridge the gap between the technical and humanistic perspectives of computing ethics and usage. A lot of my work has revolved around the AI Literacy Interest Group, which has hosted programming for AI ethics discussions and also for introducing humanists to using digital humanities tools and frameworks. I have also worked on a loom weaving project to record people’s sentiments about AI, Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) projects, and taught Python to Grad students using the Data Carpentries framework. 

Can you share a bit about your previous experience before joining the RDDS team? Tell us about your academic background and interests.

I’m an undergraduate history major, and my academic background is in global, economic, and textile history frameworks. My projects thus far have focused on early-modern merchants, South Asia, the Dutch Empire, cotton, and silk. The economic data and the paleography present in my research has made me increasingly interested in data analysis, mapping, data visualizations, and HTR tools. A lot of my interest in textile history is also influenced by my experience with fiber arts under historical reconstruction and critical making frameworks. It’s these two interests, in computational and making skills, that brought me to the digital humanities. Working with RDDS has given me an opportunity not only to develop my interests, but also to convince my peers in the humanities that these tools are valuable to them too! 

What are you most excited about in your role?

The thing that excites me the most about my role is translating humanities to computational folks and vice versa. Many humanists find working with code incredibly daunting, and those with technical backgrounds find engaging with messy human stuff equally scary. But we need to understand each other to solve many of the difficult problems facing our world! 

The most exciting project I’ve worked on was the South Asia Studies Digital Humanities Workshop, co-hosted by AILIG and South Asia Studies department, where we were able to set up Google Cloud Vision’s OCR and HTR systems for many South Asianists who may never have interacted with their command line before the workshop. We were also able to have many interesting discussions about the potential of digital humanities tools and methods, how to overcome the fear that humanists feel when encountering code, and the issue of linguistic diversity in training LLMs. 

What have you been surprised by at Penn or Philadelphia?

Philadelphia transformed me from an ally to football fans into an active enjoyer of football. Go birds! 

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I’m pretty heavily involved in the student theater scene, which eats up most of my free time! Otherwise, I can frequently be found starting (but rarely finishing) a sewing, knitting, or crochet project, or I’m in the kitchen making big batches of beans. And very occasionally, I can be spotted in drag.

Feel free to reach out to Eug Xu or other members of RDDS!