Heurist for Asian Studies: A Panel and Workshop | Heurist pour les études asiatiques : Un panel et un atelier

Join members of the Heurist Asian Studies user group for a discussion of databasing for Asian Studies. What are the particular challenges of Digital Humanities in Asian Studies? Are there common methodological problems in this highly interdisciplinary field of research? What can digital humanists learn from one another in this space?

The event will begin with a panel discussion between three Heurist users, followed by a Q&A and practical workshop. The panellists will be:

Dr Minerva Inwald, Judith Neilson Post-doctoral Fellow in Contemporary Art (University of New South Wales) designer of Mao in Multiple.

The Mao in Multiple project aims to complicate historical understandings of the relationship between the visual arts and material culture in the People’s Republic of China by creating a database of objects that feature Liu Chunhua’s oil painting Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan (1967), an artwork that was reportedly reproduced in various formats more than 900 million times during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Data for the project was collected from the mainland Chinese online second-hand market Kongfz.com, and the database is designed to preserve this commercial context as a document of the contemporary market for ‘red memorabilia’.

This presentation will reflect on one of the key practical challenges of the project: structuring the database to draw attention to the varied ways in which the image was reproduced on objects. Furthermore, the presentation will also reflect on how databases might be structured to preserve, or even highlight, the market conditions in which historians encounter primary sources.

Prof Christian Henriot (Aix-Marseille University), chief archtiect of the Modern China Biographical Database

The Modern China Biographical Database (MCBD) aims at recording all the historical actors who were active in China in the Late Qing and Republican periods (1830–1949), regardless of their origin, nationality and the duration of their presence in China. The origin and function of MCBD are to lay the grounds for the collection of massive amounts of biographical data and information on historical actors in modern Chinese history. The structure of the database reflects this intellectual ambition. MCBD collects a wide range of biographical information. It revolves primarily around individuals — they are at the center of the database, as well as institutions (any kind of organization: ministry, club, company, etc.), locations (any named human settlement), and events (any form of individual or collective action).

This presentation will address how we designed the database and how we incrementally added elements to match the needs of historical records. We shall discuss how this database empowers historians to perform analysis at various scales, especially through data  linking with other databases.

Dr Jarrah Sastrawan (French School for Far Eastern Studies), an Indonesianist and long-time user of Heurist, who built the websites for the IDENK and Bali Paintings projects.

The Online Inventory of Ancient Nusantara Epigraphy (IDENK) seeks to provide complete metadata and bibliographic data on the rich corpus of inscriptions from island Southeast Asia. Texts written in Indic scripts up to 1500 CE, on a variety of durable materials like metal and stone, form the bulk of the corpus. The data is managed in a Heurist database on a Huma-Num server, with a published website that allows the public to browse, search and map the inscriptions. Current challenges include tailoring search functions over multiple record types, representing complex geospatial information, and developing flexible options for exporting the data.

Click here to register for the event.

Rejoignez les membres du groupe d’utilisateurs Heurist Asian Studies pour une discussion sur la base de données pour les études asiatiques. Quels sont les défis particuliers des humanités numériques dans les études asiatiques ? Y a-t-il des problèmes méthodologiques communs dans ce domaine de recherche hautement interdisciplinaire ? Que peuvent apprendre les humanistes numériques les uns des autres dans cet espace ?

L’événement débutera par une discussion entre trois utilisateurs de Heurist, suivie d’une séance de questions-réponses et d’un atelier pratique. Les panélistes seront :

Dr Minerva Inwald (University of New South Wales), conceptrice de Mao in Multiple, une base de données sur l’histoire de l’art chinois.

Prof. Christian Henriot (Aix-Marseille Université), architrésorier en chef de la Modern Chin Biographical Database.

Dr Jarrah Sastrawan (École française d’Extrême-Orient), indonésianiste et utilisateur de longue date de Heurist, qui a construit les sites web des projets IDENK et Bali Paintings.

Cliquez ici pour vous inscrire à l’événement.