research overview
- Vilja Hulden's work focuses on American labor and social history around the turn of the twentieth century. Besides traditional historical research, she makes use of digital humanities approaches like text mining, machine learning, and social network analysis. Dr. Hulden's first book, The Bosses’ Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor Before the New Deal, which examines unions' efforts at workplace governance and employer opposition to unions, was published by the University of Illinois Press in January 2023. Her new project is a computational examination of representation at U.S. Congressional hearings since 1877. Called 'Speaking to the State,' this project (which won a NEH-Mellon Digital Publications grant in 2021) aims to illuminate who has gotten their voice heard at the U.S. Capitol over the past century and a half.