Welcome to the Digital Transformation project of the UK-China Humanities Alliance for Higher Education (UKCHA)! We are a partnership of universities in the UK and China working together to develop joint research projects and further connections in the humanities. UKCHA was founded in 2016 on the initiative of Tsinghua University and is currently led jointly by Tsinghua and the University of Exeter.
This website, hosted by the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College, is supported by the British Council grant (re)Connecting Research in China, meant to re-establish connections and create new links and areas of collaboration between UK and Chinese institutions in the post-pandemic period. The Department of Digital Humanities is leading the Digital Transformations strand of the grant, and this website is part of it – a place dedicated to exploring and mapping existing programmes in Digital Humanities in British and Chinese Universities, to showcase research, teaching, methods, and initiatives in this area.
该网站由国王学院数字人文系主办，并得到英国文化协会 资助 (re)Connecting Research in China 的支持，旨在重新建立联系并创造新的联系 大流行后时期英国和中国机构之间的联系和合作领域。 数字人文系正在领导该拨款的数字化转型部分，该网站是其中的一部分 – 一个致力于探索和绘制英国和中国大学数字人文现有项目的地方，以展示研究、教学、方法和举措 在这个区域。
Dr Jin Gao is a Lecturer in Digital Archives at the UCL Department of Information Studies, an Associate Director of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities. She is teaching on the MA/MSc in Digital Humanities programmes and MA in Archives and Records Management programme. Jin is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum working on various collaborative research projects, such as the Chinese Export Watercolours (CEW) project. She has also been co-editing the book series Intelligent Computing for Cultural Heritage (Routledge, 2024), a volume that brings together international perspectives on digital humanities topics in cultural contexts.
1.How do you define Digital Humanities?
Digital Humanities offers the possibility to ask old questions in new ways, to ask questions that would otherwise be impossible to ask, and more importantly, digital humanities also has a role in interrogating computing and AI in society and culture, and vice versa. So we’re looking at the digital through humanistic lens and not only the humanistic through a digital lens.
2. How did you become interested in DH?
I think I can say that I am a digital humanist by training, and with seven years of working experiences within the museum sector, my background is more situated within the realm of digital cultural heritage. I became interested in DH when I realised the power of digital tools to surface hidden narratives, connect disparate collections, and engage broader communities. Over time, I’ve found DH to be a space where experimentation, interdisciplinarity, and social responsibility can come together, particularly in rethinking how we document, represent, and share cultural heritage.
3. Tell us about one of your DH projects
I’m currently leading a collaborative project between UCL and the V&A on Chinese Export Watercolours (CEW). We’re using digital tools, from cataloguing and image analysis, AR and interactive exhibitions, to explore the provenance and reinterpretation of this unique collection. It’s not just about digitisation but about understanding how digital storytelling and public engagement can open new pathways for research, access, and conversations. The project is still ongoing, and it also supports student researchers and is developing an AR exhibition for UCL East.
4. And a DH project you like?
I’ve always admired Transcribe Bentham for how it brings cultural heritage work into the public domain. It doesn’t just crowdsource transcription, it builds community, blurs the line between expert and volunteer, and shows how digital infrastructure can extend the life and relevance of historical materials. Projects like this remind me that DH is not only about technology but about trust, care, and imagination.
The UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH), part of the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, is a cross-faculty research hub that bridges digital technologies and the humanities. It supports a wide array of work across the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Heritage sectors, offering services such as research support, hosting digital humanities events and courses, providing consultancy for digital projects, and facilitating teaching and research in digitisation technologies.
The centre draws on UCL’s expertise in information studies, computer science, and the arts and humanities, with its research influencing cultural heritage, museums, libraries, archives, and broader cultural sectors. It is home to a diverse network of affiliated scholars from across UCL, who teach and conduct research across multiple disciplines, contributing to a broad spectrum of digital humanities work, including library services, museums, and collections.
Teaching on DH
While the centre does not directly offer Digital Humanities (DH) courses, the Department of Information Studies, along with several other departments, provides a range of relevant short courses, undergraduate, and postgraduate modules. These include courses such as Digital Conservations and Marketing, Digital Geographies, and The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Additionally, the department offers two postgraduate programs in DH: the MA/MSc in Digital Humanities.
DH academics
Professor Oliver Duke-Williams – Programme Director for the MA Digital Humanities and MSc Digital Humanities. Oliver’s work relates to the present, future and past of censuses in the UK. Within DH research, Oliver is interested in the development of publication and other linked networks of DH researchers, and the relationship between these and language networks.
Dr. Jin Gao– Lecturer in Digital Archives. Jin Gao is interested in the digital cultural heritage, museum provenance studies, history of Digital Humanities, social network analysis, and non-Western cataloguing standards.
Dr. Karen Stepanyan – Associate Professor. Karen’s research is centred on the interdisciplinary integration of information technologies with computational concepts of knowledge. His research interest lies in the advancement of the Semantic Web technologies and understanding of the social fabric behind the Web using Social Network Analysis.
Dr. Vassilis Routsis – Senior Research Fellow. Vassilis’s research interest encompasses technology’s cultural and socio-political impacts, focusing on privacy and interdisciplinary methods in humanities and social sciences research.
Dr. Foteini Valeonti – Sloane Lab Research Fellow. Expert in specialising in leveraging blockchain technology for culture. Foteino’s research focuses on the utilisation of emerging technologies for the benefit of our cultural heritage. Foteino is interested in the research and development of innovative digital products for the cultural heritage sector, relating to the following themes: the Open Content movement (OpenGLAM), the accessibility of art and digitised collections.
Professor Wang Xiaoguang is the Professor and Vice Dean of the School of Information Management and Executive Vice Dean of the Big Data Institute, Director of the Intellectual Computing Laboratory for Cultural Heritage, and Director of the Centre for Digital Humanities at Wuhan University. His research interests are digital asset management, knowledge organisation, semantic publishing, and digital humanities.
1.How do you define Digital Humanities?
Digital humanities is an emerging interdisciplinary research field, with a particular focus on research themes at the intersection of the humanities and digital information technologies. It consists of three main types of research. One is humanities research based on digital resources, including the construction and development of digital resources, as well as the use of these digital information resources and digital tools for traditional humanities research. The second is humanities research based on digital models, that is, the use of digital modelling techniques to model and statistically analyse humanities texts, images, audio and video, and other documentary materials. The third is the research on various emerging digital phenomena.
2. How did you become interested in DH?
After graduating from Wuhan University in 2007 with a degree in Management Science and Engineering, I stayed there to work. Later, I saw that the Kyoto Centre for Digital Literature and Arts at Ritsumeikan University was recruiting postdocs from all over the world, I applied for the position, and I was accepted. During my postdoctoral research at Ritsumeikan University, I learned that the Centre had been awarded a GCOE project by the Japanese government and was actively using digital technology to conduct research on the preservation and revitalisation of Kyoto’s arts and culture.,This is when I came to understand digital humanities as an emerging research area. In my professional sensitivity, I felt that this is a new and valuable research direction, and with the irreversible development of the digital society will be more and more attention, representing the trend of humanities research, but also the cutting-edge of library and information science research. I carried out a more in-depth bibliometric analysis of this research field, and also found that this field is developing rapidly worldwide, more and more research themes are beginning to emerge, and all of them are with obvious interdisciplinary characteristics, which is very attractive. As a result, I have become increasingly interested and engaged.
3. Tell us about one of your DH projects
After returning from Japan, under the support of Prof. Ma Feicheng, I established China’s first Digital Humanities Centre at Wuhan University to promote and publicise the concept of digital humanities research. I have done some digital humanities projects, my favourite of which is the deep semantic annotation of Dunhuang murals in collaboration with the Dunhuang Research Academy in China. We worked with Xia Shengping, the director of the Information Centre of Dunhuang Research Academy to explore how to model the deep semantics of cultural heritage images as an example, in order to reveal the themes and cultural knowledge embedded in historic images. We fused Pannovsky’s theory of iconography in the field of iconology and the theory of subject indexing in the field of information organisation to construct an integrated model of deep semantic annotation of images. Based on this, we developed the subject headings and a series of visual annotation tools for Dunhuang mural images to control the normality of the tagged words and implement deep semantic annotation of the images. On this basis, we also explored the theory of cultural heritage data enhancement and the construction plan of cultural heritage smart data.
4. And a DH project you like?
Currently, we are working on the Yangtze River Civilisation Platform project based on the Intelligent Computing Laboratory for Cultural Heritage (Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory of the Ministry of Education). We will develop a digital platform to support the archaeological and historical research of the pre-Qin and Qin-Han eras. Using 3D modelling technology, GIS technology, and AI, we have already constructed an online historical map compilation system, as well as an intelligent conjugation system for bamboo slips and an online geographic information platform for pre-Qin and Qin tombs. We have also built a digital deduction theatre for cultural heritage, which is used for digital intelligence experiments and displaying our scientific research outcomes. We hope to use these tools and platforms to integrate the historical data related to Chu culture, and in this way change the research paradigm on Chu culture and the Yangtze River civilisation, provide a novel type of research infrastructure for digital humanities research, and promote the research, teaching, and global dissemination of Chu culture.
The creation of CDH reflects the University’s recognition of Digital Humanities as a strategically important area. The centre’s definition of DH work revolves around 6 main themes: the cultural, social, and epistemic impacts of digital technologies; digital research methodologies; computational humanities; digital libraries and archival-based research; digital performance, and exhibition; and research exploring cultural and social impacts of emerging technologies (University of Cambridge, 2024).
CCH is dedicated to advance, expend and promote Digital Humanities (DH) research and scholarship. It conducts research and facilitates collaborations with international partners, particularly with the Global South (University of Cambridge, 2024).
Teaching on DH
In response to DH as both a growing field of research and as an area of teaching, CDH offers comprehensive DH training through core research programs and research learning programs.
Administered by the Faculty of English, the Centre launched the MPhil in Digital Humanities program in 2022. The program is designed to equip humanities/ social science students with DH methodologies and skills necessary to engage effectively with digital research endeavours. Starting October 2024, the university will be running a PhD in Digital Humanities, allowing students to pursue advanced interdisciplinary projects at doctoral level, leveraging digital methods and tools.
Additionally, CDH provides a variety of research learning programs, including the Method Fellow programme, which focuses on developing and delivering innovative teaching in digital methods. Additionally, CHD offers short courses and themed workshop series that equip participants with essential skills in various aspects of DH. The CHD also runs a Data Schools that aims at democratising access to tools and methods for digital data collection and analysis, and at promoting ethical practices in digital research. (Source: University of Cambridge, 2024)
Key academics
Dr Anne Alexander, Senior Research Associate; Learning Director. Interested in ethics of big data, activist media in the Middle East and the political economy of the Internet. She was a part of the Ghost Fiction project.
Professor Caroline Bassett, Professor of Digital Humanities, a member of the Faculty of English; Fellow Corpus Christi; and Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities. Interested in digital media arts/media practice fields, makerspaces and galleries, critical theory, automation anxiety and refusal, black history and the digital humanities, algorithmic subjectivities, feminism, big data and algorithmic justice, Science fiction, media archaeology, net histories and more. She was part of the Ghost Fiction; and Intersections: Feminism, Technology and Digital Humanities projects.
Dr Leonardo Impett, Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities and convenor of the MPhil in Digital Humanities. Interested in computational and quantitative approaches to art and cultural history; critical computer vision, critical AI studies; historical/critical/cultural studies of training dataset and neural architectures; AI in image generation, contemporary art, and curation. He led the AI Forensics project.
Dr Hugo Leal, Teaching Associate at CDH for the MPhil in Digital Humanities; Research Associate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy (MCTD) based in CRASSH. His work focuses on the misinformation and conspiracy theories.
The Centre of Digital Humanities, Cultures and Media at the University of Manchester, previously known as the Centre for Digital Humanities (DH@Manchester), is one of the UK’s largest hubs for humanities scholars. Drawing on Manchester’s rich cultural and technological heritage, the centre fosters innovative collaborations between computational sciences and humanities disciplines. It employs advanced digital methods and technologies to address cutting-edge research at the intersection of digital technology, society, and culture. Key areas of focus include spatial humanities, digital media, humanities data visualisation, gender and sexuality studies, critical algorithm studies, platform studies, digital visual culture and art, and heritage digitisation.(Source: University of Manchester, nd)
Teaching on DH
The Centre offers a variety of Digital Humanities (DH) courses. Since September 2019, it has provided an undergraduate minor program in DH, teaching digital methods such as mapping, text mining, and data visualization to explore how digital media and technology shape our lives and future. This program allows undergraduate students on single honours degrees to choose a Minor in Digital Humanities. Upon completing two DH course units, students will receive a Certificate in Digital Humanities. The program is designed to help students develop new skills, integrating technical expertise, creativity, and critical thinking—essential abilities for success in the workplace.
In 2025, the school will welcome its first cohort of BA Digital Media, Culture, and Society students. This program is designed to foster a historical and global understanding of digital technology while developing the digital skills necessary to address major challenges in media. Additionally, the Centre offers a Master’s degree in Digital Media, Culture, and Society, which equips students with the skills and knowledge to critically engage with key debates and issues in the study of digital media and technology.(Source: University of Manchester, nd).
Key Profiles
Dr Giulia Grisot, Lecturer in Digital Humanities. She specialises in the investigation of cultures and identities in literary and non-literary texts, using NLP and machine learning to examine represented space and encoded sentiments.
Dr Sam Hind, Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture and Programme Director of the MA in Digital Media, Culture and Society. His research interests include digital navigation, machine vision, algorithmic decision-making, platform (auto)mobility, and mobile play. Whereas, his expertise lies at the intersection of media studies, science and technology studies (STS), and digital geographies.
Dr Ashley Mattheis, Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture. Her expertise lies at the intersection of critical media studies, visual rhetorical criticism, and digital cultural analyses through the lens of feminist STS and Black feminist theories.
Dr Claire Reddleman, Lecturer in Digital Humanities (Contemporary Art and Digital Culture). Her research and creative interests are in maps, contemporary art, photography and digital collage, surveillance, and the critique of capitalism
Dr Luca Scholz, Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities.His research is concerned with analysing and questioning data in historical and humanistic inquiry. He combines archival research, computational methods, and visualisation to study spatial history, intellectual history, and the representation of weather and climate.
Dr Łukasz Szulc, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture, and Programme Director of the BA in Digital Media, Culture and Society. He specialises in critical and cultural studies of digital media at the intersections of gender, sexuality and transnationalism, with a particular focus on Central and Eastern Europe, especially Poland.
Dr Joanna Taylor, Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Digital Humanities, based in the department of English Literature, American Studies, and Creative Writing. Her research bridges the frontier between literary studies, digital and environmental humanities research.
Dr Shuaishuai Wang, Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture. His research lies at the intersection of platform studies, critical algorithm studies, digital economy, and queer media.
2025年，学校将迎来第一批数字媒体、文化与社会（BA Digital Media, Culture, and Society）本科生。该课程旨在培养学生对数字技术的历史性和全球性理解，并发展解决媒体领域重大挑战所需的数字技能。此外，中心还提供数字媒体、文化与社会（Digital Media, Culture, and Society）硕士学位课程，帮助学生掌握技能和知识，批判性地参与数字媒体与技术研究中的关键辩论和问题。
我所在的中国人民大学已经开展了数字人文本硕博三个层次的专业教育，为了给学生们提供丰富的学习资源，我们建设了多模态“数字人文案例库”，目前已输入近千个案例条目，260个优秀案例，其中很多项目我都很喜欢，比如中国历代人物传记资料库（China Biographical Database, CBDB）、“影谷”（THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW）、“上海年华”（上海图书馆）、“文都时空”（南京大学）等等。我想介绍一个我和很多学生感兴趣的项目——都铎网络（The Tudor Network）。
Professor Huiling Feng, is a Doctor of Management and a doctoral supervisor based at the Digital Humanities Research Centre at Renmin University of China. She has served as the Executive Vice-President of Renmin University and is currently the Vice President of the Society of Chinese Archivists. Her research interests include archival science, digital humanities, and archival education.
1. How do you define Digital Humanities
A definition involves delineating the connotations and denotations of a concept. In my view, the connotation of Digital Humanities can be succinctly expressed as the field where digital technology and the humanities intersect. Its denotation, however, has a distinct characteristic of openness, making it neither necessary nor feasible to define it precisely. On the one hand, neither “digital” nor “humanities” has clear boundaries—the digital world is ever-changing, and the world of the humanities is vast and boundless. As the I Ching says, “civilization halts and becomes humanities,” indicating that “civilization,” encompassing various cultural phenomena of human society, is part of the humanities, showcasing its vastness. On the other hand, the diverse interweaving and merging of multiple elements from “digital” and “humanities” continuously generate new phenomena and new entities, all of which gather under the large tent of Digital Humanities, making its content and forms increasingly rich. As the multidimensional development of Digital Humanities continues, our understanding of its essence will gradually deepen, leading to a more scientifically accurate and mature abstraction of its connotation. At least for now, maintaining the openness of the concept of “Digital Humanities” is both reasonable and beneficial.
2. How did you become interested in DH?
My field of expertise is Archival Studies, and several core concepts in Archival Studies are closely related to Digital Humanities, which drew me into this field. First is the concept of “archives.” After iSchools adopted Digital Humanities as a development direction, I noticed through relevant literature and academic activities that the term “archives” (Archives) is widely used in Digital Humanities. This usage overlaps yet differs from the concept of “archives” in Archival Studies, which revealed to me new meanings of the concept of “archives” in this new field. Second is “social memory,” which is a fundamental attribute of archives and is also a focus in disciplines like history, literature, philosophy, and art, making it part of Digital Humanities. Third is the digital transformation of “archival resource development,” where its principles, pathways, tools, methods, and forms of outcomes often align with those in Digital Humanities. As original records of social life, archives are often valuable resources used in Digital Humanities projects. These encounters of concepts, theories, and methods led me to develop an increasingly strong interest in Digital Humanities, drawing me into this broad and fascinating field.
3. Tell us about one of your DH projects
For over ten years, our team has been engaged in the research and construction of “digital memory.” Since 2013, we have been developing the “Beijing Memory” digital resource platform (http://www.bjjy.cn). The ancient city of Beijing has over 3,000 years of history and nearly 900 years as a capital. Its rich and long-standing cultural heritage has not escaped the erosion of time, and we hope to recreate the past of this great city as authentically as possible in the digital world. The basic structure of “Beijing Memory” includes a “front-end” and a “back-end.” The “front-end” uses a website cluster to conduct digital narratives, creating a cultural website for each topic. Based on extensive literature, we use methods like text, images, videos, animations, modeling, games, and data visualization to vividly present its historical context and features, akin to a series of digital thematic histories. The “back-end” involves building a multimodal database of relevant literature and materials. Following knowledge organization standards, we gather, process, organize, and store these resources to achieve the aggregation and intelligent retrieval of Beijing’s historical and cultural resources. This is a long-term and ongoing project that applies a variety of Digital Humanities methods. Currently, 23 thematic websites are online, and based on these, we have developed books, digital publications, digital collectibles (NFTs), offline light and shadow exhibitions, cross-temporal teaching scenarios, and other derivative products. The project has attracted dozens of teachers, hundreds of students, and several digital cultural companies, contributing significantly to the innovative exploration of preserving and transmitting the history and culture of a major city across time and space.
4. And a DH project you like?
At Renmin University of China, where I work, we have already launched a Digital Humanities program offering master’s and doctoral degrees. To provide students with rich learning resources, we have built a multimodal “Digital Humanities Case Library,” which currently contains nearly a thousand case entries, including 260 outstanding cases. There are many projects that I like, such as the China Biographical Database (CBDB), “The Valley of the Shadow,” “Shanghai Memory” (Shanghai Library), “Wendu Time-Space” (Nanjing University), among others. I would like to introduce a project that both I and many students find intriguing—the Tudor Network.
This project was a collaborative effort by researchers with different academic specialties from various universities in the UK and Germany. It involves data analysis of 120,000 letters from the Tudor period (15th-16th centuries) held by the UK National Archives. These letters span nearly a century and involve more than 20,000 people. The project conducted text mining on all the letters, using metrics like the number of letters received and sent, nodes, and other indicators to perform similarity sorting, overall trend line analysis, outlier analysis, and more. This revealed the characteristics of each person’s communication patterns, including their correspondents and frequency, as well as the complex relationships between correspondents. Further analysis of the content of the letters unveiled the hidden history within them. We appreciate this project for its unique historical and documentary value. The project team awakened letters that had been dormant for over 500 years, conducted rigorous scientific analysis and visualization of the data within, and reconstructed a little-known segment of history. Some of the intricate and surprising historical facts uncovered are truly astonishing.
Digital Humanities (DH) Hub at the University of Reading Library
Year
2022
Short Description
Originating from the Digital Humanities Project, spearheaded by Professor Roberta Gilchrist, the Digital Humanities Hub is a collaborative endeavour situated within the university’s library. Established under Professor Gilchrist’s leadership in 2022, the DH Hub at the University of Reading is committed to fostering research innovation in Digital Humanities (DH) while nurturing ambition and encouraging experimentation within the University’s Heritage & Creativity theme (Oliva, 2022). This hub defines DH as the intersection of digital technologies, Arts and Humanities, and scholarly communication. It offers a range of support towards digital research, from offering DH knowledge and skills to assistance in developing research proposals and grant applications. Moreover, the hub’s ‘Community of Practice’ provides a platform for university researchers, staff, and postgraduate students interested in DH to collaborate, share ideas, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of digital research. Its overarching objectives include elevating the quality of Arts and Humanities research at Reading and driving innovation through DH principles, digital tools, and methodologies. (Source: University of Reading, nd).
Key Profiles
Dr Mara Oliva, Digital Humanities Academic Champion, Associate Professor in History and Lecturer in Modern American History. She leads the Community of Practice and can provide mentoring and subject-specific advice for digital research projects. Expert in the political history of the US in the 20th century, with a particular focus on the interface between domestic and foreign policy.
Professor Roberta Gilchrist, Research Dean, Heritage & Creativity, Professor of Archaeology. Expert in medieval sacred heritage, religion and gender, monasticism, magic, death and burial, health and the life course, as well as key archaeological studies on Norwich Cathedral and Glastonbury Abbey. She established the DH hub at the University of Reading.
清华大学数字人文与文学研究国际工作坊由清华大学中文系和芝加哥大学 Text Lab在2017年6月联合举办。 来自芝加哥大学的霍伊特·朗、苏真和朱远骋，哥伦比亚大学的戴安德等十余位学者出席了本次会议并作主题发言，人文学院副院长刘石教授致辞，中文系系主任王中忱教授作会议总结和展望。这次会议吸引了校内外百余人参加。与会学者围绕数字人文的统计学方法、文本细读和历史主义三种研究方法进行了广泛而深入的探讨，并对国内外人文数据库、中国数字人文研究现状等进行了介绍。
The Tsinghua University Digital Humanities project is led by an interdisciplinary team centered at Tsinghua University, with substantial support from the university itself. The core team comprises faculty and students from the School of Humanities, the Department of Computer Science and Technology, and the Centre for Statistics, as well as scholars from institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Macau University of Science and Technology, and Zhejiang University. Funded by a major project from the National Social Science Fund, the team has established a digital humanities journal, a comprehensive portal website, and the ‘Xuancong Digital Humanities Intelligence Platform’, and has introduced an experimental course for undergraduates at the Dayxin College.
The digital humanities portal website is a comprehensive digital humanities platform founded by the team, supported by Tsinghua University’s ‘Double-High’ plan and involving contributions from Zhonghua Book Company, CNKI, National Studies Network, and Chinese Online. DHLIB is the first of its kind in the Chinese-speaking world, aiming to provide a platform for ‘academic exchange, open access, interdisciplinary interaction, and collaborative sharing’.
Key members of the Tsinghua Digital Humanities team include Liu Shi, Dean of the School of Humanities; Sun Maosong, Executive Vice Dean of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence; Li Feiyue, Deputy Director of the Chinese Department; and Deng Ke, former Deputy Director of the Centre for Statistics. The team also co-founded the academic journal ‘Digital Humanities’ with Zhonghua Book Company.
On November 12-13, 2022, the ‘Voice, Network, Future: The Third Tsinghua Digital Humanities International Forum’, organized by Tsinghua University’s School of Humanities and the editorial office of ‘Digital Humanities’, and co-organised by the Bucknell University China Research Institute, was successfully held both online and offline at Tsinghua University. More than sixty scholars from over forty universities and research institutions, including twenty overseas institutions, presented their latest research findings.
Key Academics
Prof Liu Shi is the Dean of the School of Humanities at Tsinghua University, specializing in literature and cultural studies.
Prof Sun Maosong is the Executive Vice Dean of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence, focusing on artificial intelligence, large language model and its applications in social science, humanities and arts .
Prof Li Feiyue is the Deputy Director of the Department of Chinese, with expertise in Chinese literature and digital humanities.
Dr Deng Ke is the former Deputy Director of the Centre for Statistics, specialising in statistical methods and their application in digital humanities, such as content analysis.
Key Projects
Projects and achievements in the Centre for Digital Humanities at Tsinghua University provides a range of digital tools and resources designed to support digital humanities research and projects. It aims to facilitate academic collaboration, data sharing, and the development of digital resources.
Ming-Qing Routes and Literature (MQRL) is a digital platform developed by Professor Jian Jinsong. It focuses on the comprehensive digitalization of ancient Chinese routes and is dedicated to innovative research in Ming and Qing literature. The MQRL platform provides digital services for the study of ancient Chinese roads, offering detailed and accessible data on historical routes. It supports innovative research into Ming and Qing literature, exploring how geographical routes influenced literary works and historical narratives.
Intelligent Ancient Books Platform draws on the concept of knowledge graphs and integrates various technologies such as big data analytics, location-based queries, clustering queries, spatial analysis, data association, network analysis, machine indexing, and crowdsourcing. The platform aims to transform Chinese classical literature and research outcomes into a graph-based, intelligent format. This approach creates a comprehensive big data platform for ancient books, combining browsing, querying, research, and appreciation. It seamlessly integrates aesthetic reading, knowledge learning, and immersive experiences into one unified system.
Chinese Classical Poetry Semantic Search – AI Jiuge: Tsinghua University’s Natural Language Processing and Social Humanities Computing Laboratory has introduced an AI tool abbreviated as “Jiuge Semantic Search,” utilizes a retrieval algorithm that combines a deep neural network model based on BERT with an improved longest common subsequence matching tailored specifically for the characteristics of classical Chinese poetry. This algorithm is better suited to capture the complex semantics of classical poetry, resulting in more accurate, detailed, and enriched search outcomes. Additionally, the team implemented an approximate nearest neighbor search mechanism using Annoy technology, which employs a tree data structure to maximize the speed of similarity calculations between two dense vectors. They also developed an optimized longest common subsequence mechanism based on an inverted index, further enhancing the speed of string matching.
THULAC (THU Lexical Analyzer for Chinese): This is a Chinese lexical analysis toolkit developed by the Natural Language Processing and Social Humanities Computing Laboratory at Tsinghua University. The toolkit offers functionalities for Chinese word segmentation and part-of-speech tagging.THULAC is trained using the world’s largest manually segmented and part-of-speech tagged Chinese corpus, containing approximately 58 million characters, which gives it robust tagging capabilities. On the standard dataset, Chinese Treebank (CTB5), THULAC achieves an F1 score of 97.3% for word segmentation and 92.9% for part-of-speech tagging, comparable to the best-performing methods on this dataset. The combined speed for word segmentation and part-of-speech tagging is 300KB/s, processing around 150,000 characters per second. When performing word segmentation alone, the speed can reach 1.3MB/s.
Several prominent scholars attended the workshop, including Hoyt Long, Su Zhen, and Zhu Yuancheng from the University of Chicago, as well as Deandre from Columbia University, among others. Professor Liu Shi, Vice Dean of the School of Humanities, delivered the opening remarks, and Professor Wang Zhongzhen, Head of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, provided a summary and outlook at the conclusion of the event. The workshop attracted over a hundred participants from both within and outside the university.
The attending scholars engaged in extensive and in-depth discussions on three primary research methods in Digital Humanities: statistical methods, close reading of texts, and historicism. They also provided an overview of domestic and international humanities databases and the current state of Digital Humanities research in China.
Dr Godwin Yeboah is a Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of Warwick. His background includes research software engineering and the application of geospatial technologies in research or teaching, SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy), computer science, GIS, geoinformatics and photogrammetry, geodetic/geomatic engineering, and industrial experiences in software/geomatic engineering.
1. How do you define Digital Humanities?
I consider DH as a burgeoning field of scholarly endeavour that exists at the crossroads of digital technologies and humanities disciplines. It fosters innovative scholarship methods that are collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally driven in research, teaching, and publishing. DH employs digital tools and methodologies to advance the study of humanities, utilizing digital resources creatively. The transdisciplinary nature of DH becomes particularly apparent when it involves the GLAM sector, an acronym for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums which are mainly cultural institutions usually resourced to provide access to cultural heritage knowledge.
2. How did you become interested in DH?
During my tenure as a Senior Research Fellow, I developed an interest in Digital Humanities (DH). I was utilizing digital tools and innovative methods to tackle various research questions. It was then that I recognized the necessity of applying digital tools and methods to address research questions within the humanities. To boost research excellence at the University of Warwick, I decided to join a small team of research software engineers to advance DH research. My passion for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, along with my experiences in various roles in the UK, Germany, and Ghana, likely contributed to my interest in Digital Humanities. Currently, as a Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of Warwick, I work with colleagues in several faculties, centres, and beyond the University. My work involves the application of digital tools and methods in the humanities, a key aspect of Digital Humanities, but my broader scope goes beyond DH and fall within the remit of research computing at the University of Warwick.
3. Tell us about one of your DH projects?
I am leading digital research on various projects within the digital humanities at the University of Warwick. One such project is an innovative, interactive, multi-search interface I developed for the French Theatre Calendar from 1799-1804. The downloadable dataset is in French and includes both Gregorian and Revolutionary dates. The online database I developed likely surpasses others in its coverage of theatre from this period. Its multi-search functionality significantly enhances researchers’ understanding of early 19th-century theatre.
4. And a DH project you like?
There are so many DH projects that I like! One of the DH projects that I like, which has already been featured on our website here, is the “Mapping Women’s Suffrage” project. This initiative amalgamates the most recent studies and resources from scholars, local history buffs, genealogists, record keepers, and the general public. Its aim is to uncover and geographically represent the frequently obscured lives and sites associated with everyday women’s suffrage advocates. Concurrently, it constructs an unparalleled depiction of the shape and geographies of the suffrage movement nationwide during this significant era in women’s history.
Digital Humanities at Oxford refers to the collective efforts, initiatives, and resources dedicated to the application of digital tools, methods, and resources for humanities research (Torch Oxford, nd). Rather than a traditional research Centre or academic department, it encompasses a wide range of disciplines and research areas, including collaborative efforts of multiple institutions and departments within the university. This includes Torch Oxford, Oxford e-Research Centre, Bodleian Libraries, academic departments from various divisions, museums, Oxford University Press, Continuing Education, and colleges with digital humanities initiatives.
Aligned with the Humanities Division’s strategic focus on Digital Humanities’ growth and investment, Oxford’s scholarship aims to integrate digital technologies and social collaboration on a large scale. This vision is supported by a robust computational and data infrastructure, including resources like Advanced Research Computing engines and archives of ORA-Data, showing a shift towards interdisciplinary scholarship that transcends traditional boundaries and leverages digital tools and social collaboration for impactful research (Source: Oxford Mosaic, nd).
Teaching on DH
The University of Oxford offers a wide range of digital scholarship skills training opportunities for students and staff alike. Bodleian Libraries LibGuides hosts research skills workshops covering areas such as GIS and Open Access. For more specialized training, the Taylor Institute offers termly courses such as Digital Editions, focusing on creating digital editions of texts.
Since 2018, Oxford University has been hosting an annual Digital Humanities Oxford Summer School Summer School(DHOxSS), aimed at engaging students and researchers of all levels with experts on various digital humanities topics. These initiatives collectively underscore Oxford’s dedication to fostering expertise and innovation in the digital humanities domain. While Oxford does not offer Digital Humanities doctorate courses, staff members of the Oxford e-Research Center and the Oxford Internet Institute can offer joint supervision for DPhil students.
The DH Team
Dr Giles Bergel, Digital Humanities Research Officer, and Digital Humanities Ambassador, Interested in XML markup for transcription, bibliographic, text and image databases, virtual research environments, project management and documentation. Led the Computer vision approaches to the study of early printing project.
Dr Nicholas Cole, Senior Research Fellow, and Director of the Quill Project, interested in legal history and digital solutions for the editing and display of formally negotiated texts. Led the Quill Project.
Dr Megan Gooch, Head of the Centre for Digital Scholarship and Digital Humanities Support at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, and Director of the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School. Her is experienced in supporting research data management, digitisation at scale, and digital skills.
Dr Kevin Page, Senior Researcher, interested in music information retrieval, musicology, computational musicology, digital libraries, applied linked data and semantic web, cross-discipline sharing and re-use of data, distributed repositories and preservation. Part of the Mapping Manuscript Migrations project.
Dr Tara Stubbs, Associate Professor in English Literature and Creative Writing, and Digital Humanities course development at Oxford University Department for Continuing Education (OUDCE).
Located within the humanities department, Digital Scholarship @ Oxford is a new initiative aimed at transforming the landscape of digitally enhanced scholarship in Oxford (Oxford Mosaic, nd). It defines ‘digital scholarship’ as utilizing digital technology to enrich scholarly materials and methods, particularly in the humanities (Oxford Mosaic, nd). While there are some resemblances between the work of Digital Scholarship and Digital Humanities, there are key distinctions between its practice in Oxford. First, Digital Scholarship’s collaborative efforts extend beyond the humanities division, whereas Digital Humanities centres on the humanities. Second, Digital Scholarship encompasses methods and technologies potentially applicable to any academic field. Third, Digital Scholarship integrates digital methods into existing disciplines rather than establishing a new separate field. In essence, Digital Scholarship complements traditional scholarship by leveraging digital technology. In 2022, Oxford introduced its first MSc in Digital Scholarship, the intent is not to establish a new discipline, but rather, it offers comprehensive training for innovative work in existing disciplines (Oxford Mosaic, nd).
