Ajda Pretnar Žagar is a computational anthropologist with a focus on computational methods for social sciences and the humanities. Primarily, she researches how to use machine learning and data mining approaches to understand human habits and practices. Her research interests are anthropology of work, valuational studies, algorithmic systems, and political landscapes. A large part of her work is using text mining for finding patterns in textual data.
Besides research, Ajda also teaches machine learning methods. She used to be a teaching assistant at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Currently, she teaches Text Mining at the xAIM Master’s program from the University of Pavia. She held over 50 workshops for researchers, experts, and the general public. In the PUMICE project, she helps develop classes with a hint of artificial intelligence for primary and secondary schools.
Ajda is a part of the Orange data mining development team at the Faculty for Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana.
Selected work
PRETNAR ŽAGAR, Ajda, HOČEVAR, Tomaž, CURK, Tomaž. 2023. “Open data and quantitative techniques for anthropology of road traffic.” EPJ data science 12(28): 1-20. DOI: 10.1140/epjds/s13688-023-00396-4.
PRETNAR ŽAGAR, Ajda, PAHOR DE MAITI, Kristina, FIŠER, Darja. 2022. What’s on the agenda?: topic modelling parliamentary debates before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ed. 1.0. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino. Parlamentaria collection, 4. https://sidih.github.io/agenda/index-sl.html.
