Kristoffer Nielbo

Professor, Center Director
Aarhus, Denmark

I am professor and center director at Aarhus University. My research focuses on the cultural information space, emphasizing temporal dynamics and evolutionary patterns. From early in my career, I have worked extensively on modeling sequential data — particularly events, actions, and language — and applications of recurrent neural networks, which continue to inform my research. My work has been generously supported by grants from the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, UCLA Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (NSF), the Danish e-Infrastructure Consortium, the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration, the Velux Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation, the Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs, the European Union (Horizon Europe), the Danish National Research Foundation, the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen's Foundation, and the Augustinus Foundation.

Link to: Contact information.

Current Affiliations

• The Center for Humanities Computing develops software and computing infrastructure for humanities research and works with scholars to study cultural heritage data.
• AarhusNLP develops open tools for natural language processing and evaluates how well language models perform across languages.
• CORE-collective: Computational Culture and Complexity Research brings computer scientists and humanities scholars together to study artificial intelligence, social resilience, and cultural heritage.
• TEXT – Center for Contemporary Cultures of Text studies how generative AI changes the way people write, including how writers use language models to develop ideas and experiment with style.
• Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas
• Aarhus University

Projects

• Danish Foundation Models develops and evaluates open language models, datasets, and tools for Danish in collaboration with universities, industry, and public institutions.
• Spørg Lex uses AI to answer questions based on Lex’s encyclopaedia articles and provide clear source references.
• Golden Matrix uses AI to study Danish cultural heritage from 1750–1930, tracing cultural change and uncovering overlooked works, voices, and communities.
• European City² combines computational social science and quantum computing to study how voting rules shape cooperation and democratic decisions.
• Fabula-NET develops computational methods for studying literary quality and narrative structure through language models, sentiment analysis, and fractal analysis.
• Interactive HPC provides researchers at Danish universities with access to interactive high-performance computing through the UCloud platform.

Selected publications

• Nielbo, K. L., Karsdorp, F., Wevers, M., Lassche, A., Baglini, R. B., Kestemont, M., & Tahmasebi, N. (2024). Quantitative text analysis. Nature Reviews Methods Primers, 4 (25), Article 25.
• Nielbo, K. L., Enevoldsen, K., Baglini, R. B., Fano, E., Roepstorff, A., & Gao, J. (2023). Pandemic news information uncertainty: News dynamics mirror differential response strategies to COVID-19. PLOS One, 18 (1), Article e0278098.
• Nielbo, K. L., Hæstrup, F., Enevoldsen, K., Vahlstrup, P. B., Baglini, R. B., & Roepstorff, A. (2022). When No News is Bad News. News-based Change Detection During COVID-19. DH Benelux Journal, 4, 107-120.
• Nielbo, K. L., Vahlstrup, P. B., Bechmann, A., & Gao, J. (2020). Trend reservoir detection: Minimal persistence and resonant behavior of trends in social media. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2723, 290-297.
• Nielbo, K. L., Baunvig, K. F., Liu, B., & Gao, J. (2019). A curious case of entropic decay: Persistent complexity in textual cultural heritage. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 34 (3), 542-557.

All publications

Advising

• Current and former PhD students: Márton Kardos (co-adv. Roberta Rocca), Anders Falkenhard Røn (co-adv. Katrine Baunvig), Rie Schmidt Eriksen (co-adv. Katrine Baunvig), Pascale Moreira (co-adv. Katrine Baunvig), Kirsten Vad (co-adv. Katrine Baunvig), Jan Tafdrup (co-adv. Katrine Baunvig), Jan Kostkan, Frida Hæstrup (co-adv. Søren Dinesen Østergaard), Ida Marie Schytt Lassen, Anders Astrup Christensen (co-adv. Sedat Gümüs), Eva Elisabeth Houth Vrangbæk, Anne Agersnap (co-adv. Kirstine Helboe Johansen, Uffe Schjødt), Martin Bernstorff (co-adv. Søren Dinesen Østergaard), Lasse Hansen (co-adv. Søren Dinesen Østergaard), Kenneth Enevoldsen, Andreas Aalkjær Danielsen (co-adv. Søren Dinesen Østergaard, Morten Fenger).
• Current and former postdocs: Marta Kipke, Zafar Hussain, Yevhen Kostiuk, Simon Aagaard Enni, Alie Lassche, Kenneth Enevoldsen, Yuri Bizzoni.

Contact Information