Hello! I'm Ilan Ben-Meir, a Ph.D. Candidate in English Literature at Brown University, where I study the intersection of language and digital technologies.
My dissertation research focuses on the literary affordances of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, along with larger questions concerning the nature of representation in the Information Age.
Before Brown, I worked as a political journalist at BuzzFeed News, earned my MPhil with Distinction in Screen Media and Cultures at the University of Cambridge with a dissertation entitled "Nothing to Fear: Learning to Live With (Digital) Ghosts, and graduted summa cum laude with a BA in English from Yale University, where I was Phi Beta Kappa, and where I was a staff opinion columnist for the Yale Daily News as well as the founding Editor of the Yale Undergraduate Poetry Press.
I have also worked as a high school English tutor and college admissions advisor, and was hired by Brown to supervise exceptional undergraduates as they competed for the Rhodes, Marshall, Mitchell and Fulbright Scholarships in the summer of 2020. I also led the "Visionaries" seminar from 2018-2020, read original work at the New York City Poetry Festival in 2015, and served on the fiction jury of Watersprite: The International Student Film Festival in 2014.