Research Interests and Methods
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My research operates at the intersection of computational cognitive science and the social sciences, with a primary focus on two interconnected areas. First, I develop frameworks that integrate cognitive and sociocultural perspectives to model communicative capacities, especially pragmatic capacities, in both humans and generative AI systems. Second, I construct dynamic, interactional models that bridge language, behavior, and decision-making. I relate or apply these models to wide phenomena in social sciences, especially diverse “small-N” problems such as rare yet significant political decisions, organizational crisis management, language change across generations and cultures, and aspirational transformations of impoverished and displaced youth. Many of these works have also been inspired by my early PhD research experiences with modeling neural synchronizations and oscillations and animal perception and decision-making. My work and collaborations extend across various disciplines, including cognitive science, anthropology, political science, sociology, and the humanities.
Primary interests:
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Language modeling (esp. pragmatics)
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Decision-making modeling (esp. small-N problems)
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Perception, language & culture
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Society, development & politics
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Generative AI
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Broad interests:
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Sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology
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Digital humanities
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Cognitive science and the humanities (esp. philosophy, Buddhism, and art)
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History of 19th & 20th-century social sciences
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Methods:
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Computational linguistics
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Dynamical systems
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Network analysis
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Machine learning
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Information theory
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Field experiment
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Quantitative methodology
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Qualitative methodology
Selective Publications and Manuscipts
Ji, Eugene Yu (forthcoming). “Unraveling Authoritarian Reform Strategies: A Metacognitive-Subcognitive Model.” (Accepted in American Journal of Political Science AJPS; available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5143309)
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Ji, Eugene Yu (2025). “A Metasemantic-Metapragmatic Framework for Taxonomizing Multimodal Communicative Alignment.” (in review; ArxivPreprint: https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2501.01535)
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Zhang, Bolun, Yang Shen, Linzhuo Li, Eugene Yu Ji*, Di Wu, Tongyu Wu, Lianghao Dai (2025). “Tinkering Against Scaling.” ArxivPreprint: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2504.16546
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Ji, Eugene Yu (2024). “ Performing As Ways of Knowing: Projects of Legibility and State Simplification in Postcolonial Hong Kong.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology JLA 00 (0): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12434
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Ji, Eugene Yu (2024). “Large Language Models: a Historical and Socio-cultural Perspective.” Cognitive Science, 48, e13430. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13430​​​
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Ji, Eugene Yu. “Method, Morality, and the Macro-Micro Nexus: Revisiting Simon, Williamson, and North in the History of Economic Thought.” (R &R in The Journal of the History of Economic Thought JHET)
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Ji, Eugene Yu*, Yuhao Zhuang & Marieke Huysentruyt. “Empowering the Margins: Aspirational Transformations of Impoverished Youth in Rural Southwest China.” (in preparation)
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2025 Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression Research Grant
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2024 Provost’s Global Faculty Research Award, UChicago
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2023 American Political Science Association (APSA) Travel Grant
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2022 William Rainey Harper/Provost Dissertation Fellowship, UChicago By departmental nomination
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2022 Gumperz Graduate Student Best Paper Prize (Honorable Mention), the Society of Linguistic Anthropology (SLA) of the American Anthropological Association (AAA)
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2022 Norman H. Anderson Award, Department of Psychology, UChicago
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2021 Center for International Social Science Research (CISSR) Dissertation Support Award, UChicago
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2021 John Dewey Lectureship Prize, Department of Psychology, UChicago