Threshold-Calibrated Word Sense Disambiguation: Semantic Broadening Without Sense Redistribution in Schizophrenia
A sense-tracking pipeline; in the case of schizophrenia we showed that rising semantic change scores can reflect a word's use in a broader range of contexts, while retaining its core meaning.
Mar 28, 2026
LSC-Eval: A General Framework to Evaluate Methods for Assessing Dimensions of Lexical Semantic Change Using LLM-Generated Synthetic Data
An evaluation framework that generates historical synthetic benchmark datasets for testing whether semantic change methods are sensitive to detecting the kinds of change they claim to measure.
Jul 28, 2025
A Multidimensional Framework for Evaluating Lexical Semantic Change with Social Science Applications
A multidimensional framework to evaluate lexical semantic change, for tracing whether words become broader, more emotionally intense, or more positive or negative over time.
Aug 11, 2024
What should we call mental ill health? Historical shifts in the popularity of generic terms
We wrote a piece on our study in THE CONVERSATION: https://theconversation.com/mental-illness-psychiatric-disorder-or-psychological-problem-what-should-we-call-mental-distress-226748?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1717543647-1
Jun 4, 2024
The structure and evolution of social psychology: a co-citation network analysis
May 15, 2024
A search for commonalities in defining the common good: Using folk theories to unlock shared conceptions
We wrote a piece on the study in THE CONVERSATION: https://theconversation.com/what-does-the-common-good-actually-mean-our-research-found-common-ground-across-the-political-divide-220843
Jan 2, 2024
Semantic Shifts in Mental Health-Related Concepts
Link to slides that accompanied my 20-minute Presentation on this paper that was accepted to a workshop - “4th International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change 2023 (LChange ’23)” - on December 6 2023 at Resorts World Convention Centre, Singapore, affiliated with Empirical Methods for Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) 2023 Conference: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/semantic-shifts-in-mental-healthrelated-concepts/264396458
Dec 6, 2023
The semantic inflation of “trauma” in psychology
This work is the culmination of my Honours thesis. Link to slides: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/the-semantic-inflation-of-trauma-in-psychology-naomi-baes-ekaterina-vylomova-mike-j-zyphur-nick-haslam/254846644
Aug 11, 2023
Have the concepts of ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’ been normalized or pathologized? A corpus study of historical semantic change
This work is the culmination of Yu Xiao’s terrific Honours project, which I helped with. We wrote a quick piece on it in PURSUIT: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/do-we-think-about-anxiety-and-depression-differently-now
Jun 29, 2023
Has Psychology Become More Positive? Trends in Language Use in Article Abstracts
May 30, 2022