I'm a PhD candidate in Quantitative and Computational Social Science with the School of Information and Communication Studies at the University College Dublin, Ireland. My supervisor is Marco Bastos. I am part of the Connected_Politics Lab at UCD and affiliated as a guest researcher with the IT University of Copenhagen, where I work together with Luca Aiello.

My research focuses on collective narratives in conflicts. I am using large language models and structural linguistic theory to develop novel quantitative methods to measure narratives. I apply this approach to investigate the collective construction, diffusion, and evolution of narratives in various conflicts and across multiple online platforms, including news and social media.

I have a B.Sc. in Physics from Heidelberg University, Germany and an M.Sc. in Data Science from the University of Padova, Italy. During this time, I developed a strong foundation in quantitative methods, programming (Python and R), machine learning, and data analysis. My master's thesis focused on training Visual Transformer models to detect AI-generated images. I also had the opportunity to leave the lab occasionally and do field research. I worked as a Research Project Manager with the ISDC and UN OCHA to facilitate an impact evaluation survey in a refugee camp in Bentiu, South Sudan.

Beyond training language models, I find great satisfaction in engaging with narratives through theatre. I actively participate in acting and directing plays and watch shows in the local theatres on the regular. If you ever come across Milo Rau’s “La Reprise”, I highly recommend to go. It might just be the best play you will ever see.

Elfes, J. (2025). Mapping News Narratives Using LLMs and Narrative-Structured Text Embeddings. Proceedings of the 17th ACM Web Science Conference 2025, 326–337. https://doi.org/10.1145/3717867.3717868

Stojetz, W., Ferguson, N. T. N., Baliki, G., Díaz, O., Elfes, J., Esenaliev, D., Freudenreich, H., Koebach, A., Abreu, L., Peitz, L., Todua, A., Schreiner, M., Hoeffler, A., Justino, P., & Brück, T. (2022). The Life with Corona survey. Social Science & Medicine, 306, 115109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115109

Elfes, J. (in press). AI and communication networks. In M. Bastos & L. Rossi (Eds.) Handbook of Social and Communication Networks. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Elfes, J., Bastos, T., & Aiello, L. M. On Narrative: The Rhetorical Mechanisms of Online Polarisation [under review]

Elfes, J., & Bastos, M. Structuralist LLM: A Framework for Computational Narrative Analysis [under review]

Weiffen, D., Baliki, G., Elfes, J., & Brück, T. Cash and Cohesion in Crisis: On the Impacts of Anticipatory Cash Transfers in IDP Camps in South Sudan during Floods [under review]