Together with my colleagues Valeska Huber (Free University Berlin) and Isabelle Dolezalek (University of Greifswald), I have organized a workshop entitled “Hack the Middle East”:

The project aims to help us to familiarize ourselves with current possibilities of analyzing large amounts of data from the Middle East or their visual representation. In addition to concrete practical and political obstacles, research projects in languages such as Arabic, Persian and Urdu also face special technological challenges. In this context, even advanced OCR technology reaches its limits when processing manuscripts, journals, administrative files and printed books.

In a first online workshop held in English on August 11-12, 2020, we will focus on some basic aspects of Digital Humanities .

In a second step, a hackathon will explore the history of the Middle East and its relation to Germany with sources that areĀ  stored in German archives and libraries. Since hackathons in the humanities have so far mainly been limited to digitized data material in European languages, the question arises as to how to proceed in this case. What sort of limitations do we face? What technological expertise and coding experience is required to conduct a successful hackathon?

Withour project, we aim at illustrating in an innovative format how closely the Middle East and Germany are interwoven.

You can find the program here:

https://www.diejungeakademie.de/en/activities/projects/hack-the-middle-east/

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