Short Bio: Dr. Beatrice Alex holds a Senior Lectureship and a Chancellor’s Fellowship at the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures as well as the Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh. As head of the Edinburgh Language Technology Group, she spearheads research and development initiatives in text mining and Natural Language Processing (NLP), applying innovative algorithms and solutions to diverse datasets, domains and languages within highly interdisciplinary research projects. Notably, she has been collaborating on the AIM-CISC (Artificial Intelligence and Multimorbidity: Clustering in Individuals, Space and Clinical Context) project, where she leads NLP work on applying geoparsing to enable place-based media analysis in the context of population health.

Title: News Media as a Lens: Exploring Neighbourhood Health through the Analysis of Geoparsed and Clustered Local News

Abstract : The understanding of the multifaceted impact of communities on health remains challenging to define, with limited insight into place-based processes and their implications for health and inequalities. This knowledge gap undermines the development of effective policy interventions aimed at enhancing local health and well-being. In this keynote, I will introduce the Edinburgh Geoparser and illustrate its utility through a case study showcasing its application in augmenting neighbourhood-based health research. By leveraging NLP techniques for geoparsing and clustering of local news articles, we, together with our collaborators in social science and geography, unlock valuable insights into neighbourhood characteristics. These findings are poised to drive forward a new wave of place-based research, offering a broader exploration of spatial processes and their influence on health outcomes.