Timothy Tangherlini

Tim Tangherlini is Professor in Scandinavian at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as the director of the Graduate Program in Folklore. He is interested in the circulation of stories on and across social networks, and the ways in which stories are used by individuals in their ongoing negotiation of ideology with the groups to which they belong. He has worked on stories told as true in groups as diverse as 19th century Danish farmers, diving women in South Korea, paramedics in Oakland, and stories and rumors on social media. In his current research, he focuses on computational approaches to problems in narrative and storytelling dynamics. In particular, he is developing formal models of common story genres such as rumor and conspiracy theories. He is a fellow of the American Folklore Society, and a member of the Royal Gustav Adolf Academy, one of Sweden's Royal Academies.