zackary okun dunivin

Howdy! I'm a computational methodologist, cultural sociologist, and complexity scholar. Most of my research uses large, scraped, and crowdsourced data to examine culture and cultural change. What most excites me about culture is how much of human experience it touches. My work variously intersects with political communication, media studies, race and gender studies, digital humanities, social movements, decision science, and organizational behavior. In the coming years, I'll have an eye toward research into how AI systems are changing society, particularly with regard to organizations and work.

I have a PhD in Complex Systems (Informatics) and Sociology from Indiana University. My undergraduate studies at Reed College were in Evolutionary and Molecular Biology.

Beginning this year, I am a post-doctoral fellow in the Baden-Württemberg Special Program for International Academic Freedom [DE / EN] based at the University of Stuttgart. My work addresses AI as a socio-cultural object, ethical alignment, and LLMs as tools for conducting social research.

I'm on the job market for 2026! If you know of openings that fit my profile, please let me know.