Xanda Schofield

Xanda Schofield is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College (HMC), a prestigious undergraduate STEM institution emphasizing technical excellence and interdisciplinary education. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University (2019), advised by Prof. David Mimno, and a B.S. in Math and Computer Science from HMC. Prior to academia, she worked on the search team at Yelp.

Her research focuses on natural language processing (NLP) applied to digital humanities and computational social science, with a particular emphasis on privacy in text models and ethical CS education. She contributed a chapter on NLP to the Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities (2022) and collaborates with the FICUS Lab (Prof. Sarah Kavassalis) and EconText Lab. Her work includes improving latent variable models for non-expert researchers and integrating privacy considerations into text analysis.

Teaching highlights include courses on Algorithms, Natural Language Processing, and Computing Practices. She advises students such as Ford Ashmun, Stephanie Fulcar, and Nile Phillips, whose collaborative projects have been presented at AGU 2023 and Text As Data 2023. She also engages in pedagogical initiatives, including the Text Analysis Pedagogy Institute (2022).