About

Todd Presner is a Professor of Comparative Literature, Germanic Languages, and Jewish Studies at UCLA. He serves as the Chair of the Digital Humanities Program. His fields of interest include European intellectual history, the history of media, visual culture, digital humanities, and cultural geography. Presner's work integrates these areas to explore the intersections of media, culture, and history, contributing to the development of digital humanities and critical theory within the academic community.

Research topics

• Humanities
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Art
• Engineering
• Media studies
• Archaeology
• Geography
• Civil engineering
• Visual arts
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• AI and The Future of Holocaust Research & Memory

  Open MIND · 2026-02-23

  articleOpen access
  OA PDFDOI

• Dialogues II Response III: Uncritical Fabulation and Holocaust Vibe: How AI Constructs the Past

  2026-01-28

  report1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Holocaust and Digital Humanities

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-05-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ethics of the Algorithm

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-01-01 · 3 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ethics of the Algorithm

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-09-24

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ethics of the Algorithm

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-06-28 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  How computational methods can expand how we see, read, and listen to Holocaust testimony The Holocaust is one of the most documented—and now digitized—events in human history. Institutions and archives hold hundreds of thousands of hours of audio and video testimony, composed of more than a billion words in dozens of languages, with millions of pieces of descriptive metadata. It would take several lifetimes to engage with these testimonies one at a time. Computational methods could be used to analyze an entire archive—but what are the ethical implications of “listening” to Holocaust testimonies by means of an algorithm? In this book, Todd Presner explores how the digital humanities can provide both new insights and humanizing perspectives for Holocaust memory and history. Presner suggests that it is possible to develop an “ethics of the algorithm” that mediates between the ethical demands of listening to individual testimonies and the interpretative possibilities of computational methods. He delves into thousands of testimonies and witness accounts, focusing on the analysis of trauma, language, voice, genre, and the archive itself. Tracing the affordances of digital tools that range from early, proto-computational approaches to more recent uses of automatic speech recognition and natural language processing, Presner introduces readers to what may be the ultimate expression of these methods: AI-driven testimonies that use machine learning to process responses to questions, offering a user experience that seems to replicate an actual conversation with a Holocaust survivor. With Ethics of the Algorithm , Presner presents a digital humanities argument for how big data models and computational methods can be used to preserve and perpetuate cultural memory.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>In Search of the Drowned: Testimonies and Testimonial Fragments of the Holocaust</i> Gabor Mihaly Toth

  Holocaust and Genocide Studies · 2023-03-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Video Conferencing

  transcript Verlag eBooks · 2023-11-14 · 1 citations

  bookOpen access

  The COVID-19 pandemic has reorganized existing methods of exchange, turning comparatively marginal technologies into the new normal. Multipoint videoconferencing in particular has become a favored means for web-based forms of remote communication and collaboration without physical copresence. Taking the recent mainstreaming of videoconferencing as its point of departure, this anthology examines the complex mediality of this new form of social interaction. Connecting theoretical reflection with material case studies, the contributors question practices, politics and aesthetics of videoconferencing and the specific meanings it acquires in different historical, cultural and social contexts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Digitale Geisteswissenschaften und Holocaustzeugnisse. Anmerkungen zu einer globalen Genealogie

  J.B. Metzler eBooks · 2022-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Das Zeugnis ist eine Form des literarischen und historischen emplotment, weil es mit Hilfe von narrativen Verfahren gelebte Erfahrungen in Erzählungen überträgt. Während in den Jahren des Holocausts schriftliche Zeugnisse zur Zeit der Ereignisse produziert wurden (wie etwa Tagebücher, Briefe und Augenzeugenberichte), wurde der erste bekannte Versuch, Zeugnisse von Überlebenden in deren eigenen Worten aufzunehmen, 1946 in Displaced Persons (DP)-Lagern unternommen. Diese von David BoderBoder, David auf einem Drahttongerät festgehaltenen Zeugenaussagen zielten darauf ab, das globale Ereignis des Holocausts durch die Worte von Überlebenden im Rahmen von Interviews zu verstehen.

  PublisherDOI

• Multi-scale Hybridized Topic Modeling: A Pipeline for Analyzing Unstructured Text Datasets via Topic Modeling

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2022-11-24

  preprintOpen access

  We propose a multi-scale hybridized topic modeling method to find hidden topics from transcribed interviews more accurately and efficiently than traditional topic modeling methods. Our multi-scale hybridized topic modeling method (MSHTM) approaches data at different scales and performs topic modeling in a hierarchical way utilizing first a classical method, Nonnegative Matrix Factorization, and then a transformer-based method, BERTopic. It harnesses the strengths of both NMF and BERTopic. Our method can help researchers and the public better extract and interpret the interview information. Additionally, it provides insights for new indexing systems based on the topic level. We then deploy our method on real-world interview transcripts and find promising results.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Della Ratta

  Goethe University Frankfurt

  882 shared

• Rembert Hüser

  Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek

  882 shared

• Jan Distelmeyer

  University of Freiburg

  882 shared

• Chris E. Johanson

  4 shared

• Diane Favro

  University of California, Los Angeles

  3 shared

• Jeffrey T. Schnapp

  3 shared

• David Shepard

  Evidation Health (United States)

  3 shared

• Wulf Kansteiner

  3 shared

Labs

• Working Group in Memory StudiesPI

Awards & honors

• CLGSA Fellowship and Graduate Support
• The Michael Henry Heim Memorial Lecture