Mariah A. Knowles, PhD

About Me

Writer, teacher, mixed methods Swiss army knife, ttrpg enthusiast, one of those "art with code" weirdos.

The Curriculum Lead for Tiny Earth at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. For more, see my vita.

Coco.

Open Source

My teaching's been called "versatile and highly-regarded, as indicated by peer and student evaluations" with a "dedication to open, equitable, and learner-centered pedagogy." Find it on github.

Epistemic Network Analysis

My most proud open source project is my Julia implementation of Epistemic Network Analysis.

It's a PCA-based method for modeling qualitative connections. Here's an example I teach showing my first year on hormone replacement therapy:

Humanity, Blessed: TTRPG

I'm also developing an open-source TTRPG.

It's called Humanity, Blessed, was designed as my distraction project the year I was finishing my dissertation, and is built to be accessibility-first without feeling watered down.

I wanted a system that was flexible enough for the kinds of games my friends want to play and to keep up with my changing interests in genres.

Magic and elves and dragons? Heist at the museum? A game where everyone plays as a pair of shoes in some kind of Cars-esque universe?

Humanity, Blessed is for stories about what it means to be human, doing goofy, cool, fantastic little human things.

Me.

Talks, Papers, Quotes

“Yet without the right trajectory's rungs, what is there to climb? It is not rungs that the right trajectory sells us, but the want itself of climbing.”

Knowles, Mariah A. "Doing Evil for Money": Motivation, Collaboration, and Social Change in AI Ethics Practice and Education. The University of Wisconsin - Madison. 2025. ProQuest & Slides

“it is still a valuable reminder that at its most basic level, the output of ENA models...are positions in a meaningful dimensional space.”

Scianna, Jennifer; and Mariah A. Knowles. "Exploring Variance: Seeking Nuanced Stories Within ENA." International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography. 3-7 Nov 2024. 10.1007/978-3-031-76335-9_12

“jENA is designed to allow researchers to painlessly create custom ENA models and rotations [and] adjust model configurations”

Knowles, Mariah A.; Jennifer Scianna, and Jodi Masters-Gonzales. "Writing Custom ENA Rotations in the Julia Programming Language." International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography. 8-12 Oct 2023. Abstract & Workshop

“by participating in this co-design process, teachers gained a more sophisticated understanding of the role that AI plays”

Kim, Yoon Jeon; Jennifer Scianna, and Mariah A. Knowles. "How Can We Co-design Learning Analytics for Game-Based Assessment: ENA Analysis." International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography. 15-19 Oct 2022. 10.1007/978-3-031-31726-2_15

“our goal is to tell a story about group differences, and...this task demands the ability to discriminate between groups”

Knowles, Mariah A.; Amanda Barany, Zhiqiang Cai, and David Williamson Shaffer. "Multiclass Rotations in Epistemic Network Analysis." International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography. 15-19 Oct 2022. 10.1007/978-3-031-31726-2_5 & Slides

“ONA...allows researchers to make statistical claims about how different individuals or groups respond to certain common ground differently”

Tan, Yuanru; Andrew R. Ruis, Cody Marquart, Zhiqiang Cai, Mariah A. Knowles, and David Williamson Shaffer. "Ordered Network Analysis." International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography. 15-19 Oct 2022. 10.1007/978-3-031-31726-2_8

“Shifting one's unit of analysis to codes themselves allows one to zoom in on the sequence of events participants follow, skip, or return to repeatedly”

Presentation: Knowles, Mariah A.; Meixi, Tolulope Famaye, Amanda Barany, and Mamta Shah. "Code-wise ENA: A Sequential Representation of Discourse." International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography. 15-19 Oct 2022. Poster

“Technology creates risks. We have responsibilities w.r.t. those risks. One type of risk is: People will be subject to an environment that runs afoul of fair terms of social cooperation”

Presentation: Knowles, Mariah A. "What's Fair?" ML+X. Madison, WI. 6 Dec 2022. Slides

“Game-based assessments that incorporate learning analytics can be used as an alternative to pencil-and-paper tests”

Kim, Yoon Jeon; Mariah A. Knowles, Jennifer Sciana, Grace Lin, and José A. Ruipérez-Valiente. "Learning analytics application to examine validity and generalizability of game-based assessment for spatial reasoning." British Journal of Educational Technology. 2022.10.1111/bjet.13286

“Research has two steps. Step one: Get the story fucking right. Step two: Tell the moral of the story”

Presentation: Knowles, Mariah A. "Coherence and Interdisciplinarity." NetPLACE. Online. 16 Jun 2022. Slides

“No telling is neutral, and we deepen our analytic insight as we write, as we flesh out, investigate, and interrogate why our telling ought be the right one”

Guest Lecture: Knowles, Mariah A. "Telling Stories of Transitions: Sharing the Endeavors of Quant and Qual Research." For Modupe Adewuyi's NURS 4434 Vulnerable Populations. Kennesaw State University. 7 Feb 2022. Slides

“I refuse to structure my story around gender dysphoria, trauma, or generally 'damage.' Research [like that] is research that's 'thinking of ourselves as broken'”

Knowles, Mariah A. "Telling Stories of Transitions." International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography. 6-9 Nov 2021. 10.1007/978-3-030-93859-8_8 & Slides & Recording (session 4A)

“one front for addressing this interface between AI and inequity/injustice is AI Ethics Education”

Presentation: Knowles, Mariah A. "Five Motivating Concerns for AI Ethics Instruction." Association for Information Science & Technology. Online. 31 Oct 2021. 10.1002/pra2.481

“there is value in sharing, normalizing, and conceptualizing one's own story”

Presentation: Knowles, Mariah A.; and Lauren Scanlon. "Networks of One and Justice." Network Science: Networked Justice. Online. 28 Jun 2021. Slides

“because hENA uses a regression to perform the projection [it can] account for multi-level nested structures [and] continuous variables”

Presentation: Knowles, Mariah A.; and David Shaffer. "Hierarchical Epistemic Network Analysis." International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography. Online. 8 Feb 2021. Abstract & Poster

“the ability to manipulate time [helps] players to remember events that occurred long ago and tie them to current consequences”

Scianna, Jennifer; David Gagnon, and Mariah A. Knowles. "Counting the Game: Visualizing Changes in Play by Incorporating Game Events." Advances in Quantitative Ethnography. ICQE 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science 1312. Springer. 2021. 10.1007/978-3-030-67788-6_15

“Conceptual explanations...often have a geometric intuition about them...it's the reason we're doing qualitative research”

Presentation: Knowles, Mariah A.; and David Shaffer. "Geometric Intuitions in Qualitative Research." Trans Math Day. Online. 5 Dec 2020. Slides

“if you forget to believe in yourself, find someone to remind you”

Knowles, Mariah A. Various Profiles. ACM XRDS. 2018-2019. List