Liberal Arts and Sciences
Seth Bernstein Research Group
Led by Seth Bernstein · History
What we study
Dr. Bernstein studies the history of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states. His digital humanities project uses machine learning to analyze Soviet secret police archives at large scale, and his work also uses GIS and databases.
What working here is like
- Computational
- Reading, writing & theory
- Coding required
- Projects
- 2
- Papers
- 4
Current projects
Machine learning on Soviet secret police archives
A digital humanities project that uses machine learning to analyze Soviet secret police archives on a large scale.
Artificial Intelligence and The Florida Alligator: Representational Bias as a Historical Tool
The lab uses a large language model to study more than 10,000 issues of The Florida Alligator, UF's century-old student newspaper. The model writes profiles of typical UF alumni decade by decade, showing how AI's built-in bias can reveal how students and their language changed over time.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 92
Summaries are written by AI in plain language from public symposium abstracts and may be imperfect.
Recent papers, explained
- AI as a Historical Lens: An Experiment in Periodization of Russia’s State Photography Archive with Neural Networks
2025 · Slavic Review
- Negotiating Respect: Soviet Aspirations and the Repatriation of Allied Nationals from Eastern Europe
2025 · The Journal of Slavic Military Studies
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- Unfinished Business: Stalinist Anti-Jewish Investigations before and after the Death of Stalin
2024 · Kritika
Looks at Jewish leaders arrested in the USSR after Stalin's death for alleged espionage.
- Fall of a New Soviet-Jewish Person: The Unmasking of Anti-Antisemite Aleksandr Litinskii, aka American Spy Big Boss
2024 · Contemporary European History
Examines how a Soviet Jew pretended to be an American spy to avoid anti-Jewish persecution.
Plain-language summaries are AI-written and reviewed by us; check the paper for details.
How to reach out
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