DS Events at the Institute

2023

November 10, 12:00-3:00 pm: Building an Electronic Syriac Corpus using OCR: Preserving and Digitizing Cultural Heritage—Launch of Simtho III. Sponsored by NES and DS at the Institute for Advanced Study and Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. The digitization of cultural heritage materials plays a crucial role in preserving and making accessible historical and linguistic resources. The Simtho corpus is a result of constructing an electronic Syriac corpus through the application of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and correcting the OCR results in collaboration with young women and men in the Middle East who make up Beth Mardutho's Meltho Lab team. See here for event information and program.  

2024

February 16, 12-1 pm (EST): Near Eastern Studies and Digital Scholarship @IAS joint lecture: DAMAST - an interactive research environment, Prof. Dr. Dorothea Weltecke and Dr. Florian Jäckel (Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). Damast is an interactive research environment for visualizing the multi-religious situation in the Islamicate world from 600 to 1400 CE. For the first time, all the existing geographical and chronological data about communities of Dhimmis under Muslim rule have been gathered together into one Database. Over 8,300 pieces of evidence at more than 440 locations are part of the database. They are visualized on a map, a timeline and displayed in various tables. Various filters, such as time, location, religious community and source allow detailed inspection of the data. Results of the research remain accessible as a report and can be referenced. Our presentation will introduce the research environment and the underlying concepts, explains some of its features - and its shortcomings. Register in advance at https://bit.ly/3SDY4ie. 

March 22: NES Workshop, Scholarly Digital Editions of Arabic-Script Texts. Conveners: Adam Mestyan (School of Historical Studies, IAS and Duke University), Sabine Schmidtke (School of Historical Studies, IAS) and María Mercedes Tuya (Digital Scholarship @IAS). Meeting in the White-Levy Room (IAS).