She is a founding co-director of the KDH lab[3] and co-created the first human-centered artificial intelligence[4] curriculum launched in 2016 at Kenyon College[5] as the director of IPHS.
She has mentored and co-authored hundreds of student ML/AI research projects in the humanities, arts and social sciences that have been downloaded almost 60,000 times worldwide as of September 2024.
Her book The Shapes of Stories, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022,[11] provided a comprehensive methodology for using diachronic sentiment analysis to analyze the emotional aspects of plot across dozens of literary classics using SentimentArcs.
[21] Elkins was an early advocate for incorporating AI in literary studies with co-authored essays in The Journal of Cultural Analytics in September 2020[22] and Narrative in January 2021.
[31] Elkins traditional scholarship includes essays on Plato,[32] Virginia Woolf,[33] Franz Kafka,[34] Marcel Proust,[35] and William Wordsworth.
[45] She will present on "How agentic behavior, reasoning, and emotional intelligence upend previous notions of human exceptionalism" for the Khan Institute at Smith College in February 2025.
[48] Elkins debated AI generative art with co-panelist Boris Eldagsen (winner[49] of Sony World Photography Award 2023) and Shane Balkowitsch on Al Jazeera in April 2023.
[50] She presented her perspectives on emotions at the intersection of AI and literature with experts Rosalind Picard, Joseph LeDoux, and Mabel Berezin.