Dr Mark J. Hill is a Lecturer in Cultural Computation in the Department of Digital Humanities. He has an interdisciplinary background spanning digital humanities, computational social science, and intellectual history.

Prior to joining King's, Dr Hill was a Lecturer in Computational Social Science at the University of Kent. He has also held positions at the University of Helsinki and the London School of Economics. He completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford, focusing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's political thought and its intellectual and cultural influences.

Research interests and PhD supervision

His work combines digital methods with robust methodological awareness to contribute both to substantive research topics and develop digital methods. Research interests lie at the intersection of digital humanities, computational social science, and intellectual history. His work focuses on:

• Social network analysis and idea transmission (including historical network analysis)
• Public discourse analysis using large-scale digital datasets
• Quantitative text analysis and natural language processing
• Critical examinations of digital research methods and tools, including ethical considerations in digital research and AI
• Early Modern European intellectual history

He is currently engaged in a project looking at patterns in discourse and idea transmission in both historical and contemporary contexts.

Teaching

Mark teaches both methodological and substantive subjects covering, broadly, digital research methods, computational social science, cultural studies and digital culture, and critical thinking in the digital age.

He is able to supervise PhDs within the areas related to his research interests (see above).

Expertise and Public Engagement

Mark is committed to bridging academic research with public understanding of digital culture and technology. He has collaborated with public sector and private organizations on data analysis projects, spoken at various public events and webinars, and worked to make research accessible beyond academia.

Selected Publications

• Mark J. Hill, Ville Vaara, Mikko Tolonen. “Communication and idea transmission across historical communities: A quantitative analysis of Early Modern Nonconformist networks” in Huntington Library Quarterly (2024).
• Mark J. Hill. “Rousseau and Poland: A pragmatic rejuvenation rather than ideal reforms,” in Constitutional Moments: Founding Myths, Charters and Constitutions through History (Brill, 2024).
• Mark J. Hill, Mikko Tolonen. “A Computational Investigation into the Authorship of Sister Peg,” in Eighteenth-Century Studies 54.4 (2021).
• Mikko Tolonen, Mark J. Hill, A. Z. Ijaz, Ville Vaara, Leo Lahti. “Examining the Early Modern Canon: The English Short Title Catalogue and Large-Scale Patterns of Cultural Production,” in Data Visualization in Enlightenment Literature and Culture (Palgrave Millican, 2021).
• Mark J. Hill. “看不見的詮釋：對數位人文學和思想史的反思,” in New Directions in Intellectual History (Taipei: Linking Publishing Company, 2020) (Translation of “Invisible Interpretations: Reflections on the Digital Humanities and Intellectual History”).
• Mark J. Hill, Simon Hengchen. “Quantifying the impact of dirty OCR on historical text analysis: Eighteenth Century Collections Online as a case study,” in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (2019).