Hello there! I am a PhD student in the CU Boulder department of computer science advised by Maria Antoniak in the Culture, Language, and Systems Lab. I broadly work on problems within cultural analytics and NLP. Right now I am especially interested in computational applications of narrative theory. Recently, I’ve applied narrative theory to audit the pretraining data of LLMs, identify how Reddit users make sense of addiction, and probe BERT models for narrative understanding.
In my free time I love being active, watching movies, and reading (see my recent book list below). If you want to discuss research ideas, general career things, or just say hi, I’m always happy to chat. Reach out at teagrjohnson (at) gmail (dot) com.
News
Aug 21, 2026 Our paper on narrative content in LLM pretraining data was accepted to EMNLP findings 2026 in Budapest!
Jun 29, 2026 I’ll be attending ICSSI in Boulder June 29-July 1. See you there!
Jun 19, 2026 New preprint out on arXiv! Characterizing Narrative Content in Web-scale LLM Pretraining Data with Elliott Ash, Andrew Piper, and Maria Antoniak. You can also try out the agency/setting NarraBERT model here!
Apr 14, 2026 Our work on narrative analysis in pretraining data was accepted for a parallel talk at IC2S2! See you in Burlington in July!
Apr 13, 2026 I was accepted to SemEval 2026 for Task 9 (detecting polarization on social media). See you all in San Diego at ACL in July!
Feb 23, 2026 I was awarded the Beverly Sears Award from CU Boulder for my work on analyzing narratives in pretraining data.
Aug 21, 2025 Started my journey as a PhD student at CU Boulder!
Recent Books I've Loved
Cloud Cuckoo Land This book is about how we humans reckon with the end of things. Throughout the book, stories play a central role in how we make sense of the world and our limited time on it. I think it's a nice representation of the importance of stories.
Player Piano This is one of my favorite books of all time. It is eerily prescient about the future of automation and I truly love Kurt Vonnegut's writing style.
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane Picked up this book on a whim (mostly because I love tea) and it ended up being one of my favorite books of the past few years. It's a very emotional story that has given me a new appreciation for the history of tea, adoption, and the Akha people of China.
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage This is an incredible display of human resilience and an amazing piece of storytelling. I couldn't put this book down.
Basic elements of narrative This book provides the narrative theory foundation for my current research. Not only is it a solid intro to the field, but I genuinely enjoyed reading it and feel that it is applicable to fields beyond just literature.