I am an information scientist working at GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Köln (Cologne),  Department Computational Social Science. At GESIS, I’m head of the team “Social Analytics and Services” and responsible for new approaches to using social media in social science research. In 2015, was of two inaugural Digital Studies fellows at the Library of Congress’ John W. Kluge Center. Until 2012 I worked at the Department of Information Science at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf. Within the fields of information science and web science my research focus is on social media, informetrics & altmetrics, web users and communication structures. I am co-editor of Twitter and Society (Peter Lang, 2014).

My PhD thesis was about combining Social and Semantic Web strategies for knowledge representation. Before my PhD, I completed a Magistra Artium degree in History, Media Studies and Information Science in 2005. I have regularly given classes in information science at HHU Düsseldorf and enjoy working in interdisciplinary research teams.

on the web

@kwelle on Twitter
Slideshare  • mendeley • Google Scholar

+ my website at GESIS

news

Some of my recent and upcoming activities:

• GESIS will host the 3rd International Conference on Compuational Social Science (IC2S2 2017) in Cologne, July 10-13. Call for papers is open until March 01, 2017!
• We have organized the 3rd Computational Social Science Winter Symposium (#cssws16) in Cologne, Nov 29 – Dec 1, 2016.
• I was teaching a class on “Social Media as a Source for Research Data” organized by NCRM, University of Southampton (July 27-28, 2016). (See course material here).
• Short paper with Axel Bruns presented at Web Science Conference 2016: Twitter as a First Draft of the Present – and the Challenges of Preserving It for the Future. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2908131.2908174 (view authors’ version: WebSci16_Bruns+Weller, view slides).
• Short paper with Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda at Web Science Conference 2016: A Manifesto for Data Sharing in Social Media Research. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2908131.2908172 (view slides: WebSci16_Weller+Kinder)
• I’ve been interviewed by the Library of Congress John W. Kluge Center on “preserving social media for future historians” (which was re-posted on Time.com), by Politico and by Inside Higher Ed.
• Videoand slides from my 2015 lecture at the Library of Congress, organized by the John W. Kluge Center: “The digital traces of user generated content. How social media data may become the historical sources of the future.”