Online Workshop on Oriental Manuscripts and Digital Humanities

The workshop picks up on the current trend that researchers and students in different disciplines of the humanities are increasingly using digital tools. The continuously growing number of projects with digital components at research institutions and universities shows that the Digital Humanities are flourishing. They promise to open up new avenues for future research and innovation. Recently, work with manuscripts from the Islamic world in particular has received new impetus.

The online workshop offers early-stage researchers an interdisciplinary training that allows them to meet the challenges of digitisation in their respective fields. The event draws on the holdings of the Gotha Research Library, which preserves the third largest collection of Oriental manuscripts in Germany, and brings in the expertise of international researchers working with manuscripts and digital tools. The lectures will focus on aspects of digitisation, cataloguing, online presentation and text recognition (OCR, transcribus) of manuscripts from the Islamic world.

The event is being held within the framework of the international cooperation project MIDA ("Mediating Islam in the Digital Age"), which involves 25 partner universities and research institutions. MIDA members are investigating how digitalisation is changing Islamic beliefs, practices, political and social institutions and perspectives. Exploring the changes brought about by processes of digitisation and computer-based methodologies in the way the Islamic world deals with its past, especially its cultural and literary heritage as reflected in manuscript cultures, is a central component of this work.