Ben Lee
Project Description
Assistant Professor, Information School
Ph.D., Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington, 2023
| Contact Information: Email: bcgl@uw.edu |
More Information: CV |
Faculty profile
Benjamin Charles Germain Lee is an assistant professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. His research reimagines how we search and interpret cultural heritage collections. This research has three central goals: (1) developing large-scale search and discovery systems for digitized and born-digital collections; (2) leveraging these systems in order to advance research in the digital humanities and cultural heritage; and (3) studying the ethical and sociotechnical implications of applying machine learning in this context. Within Jewish Studies, Lee’s interests lie in how approaches from machine learning and the digital humanities can be applied to relevant archives, such as the University of Washington’s Sephardic Studies Digital Collection and the International Tracing Service Archive. Lee also has a longstanding interest in Holocaust memory as a third-generation survivor, having written for magazines and public venues including The New Republic, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Real Life, and The Bennington Review (forthcoming).
Prior to joining the University of Washington as faculty, Lee served as an Innovator in Residence as well as a Kluge Fellow in Digital Studies at the Library of Congress. He also was the inaugural Digital Humanities Associate Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, as well as a Visiting Fellow in Harvard’s History Department and the 2020-2021 Richard and Ina Willner Memorial Fellow in the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. Lee received his Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Washington, which was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in machine learning.
Public scholarship
- Article: “Using machine learning to explore photos, illustrations, ads and more in historic Ladino newspapers” (2021)
- Public talk: “The Ladino Press: Using Machine Learning to Excavate Visual Content in Ladino Newspapers” on YouTube (2021)
- Public talk: “Teaching Newspapers to Read Ladino, a Heritage Language of Sephardic Jews” on YouTube (2020)