Marching Onwards: The Digital Orientalist in the New Academic Year

The new academic year is about to begin and as always the Digital Orientalist will return to a regular, weekly posting schedule. Today we are pleased to announce our team for the academic year 2019-2020 and an exciting affiliation with the American Oriental Society!

Affiliation with the American Oriental Society

The Digital Orientalist is pleased to announce that we will be entering a three-year trial affiliation with the American Oriental Society. Founded in 1842, the American Oriental Society (henceforth AOS) is one of America’s oldest academic societies with a long history of publishing groundbreaking scholarship on Oriental Studies in its journal, the Journal of the American Oriental Society, and its monograph series, the American Oriental Series Monographs. Through our affiliation, we hope that we will not only continue to expand our readership and transition to a digital magazine, but also that we will be able to expand the content that we are able to bring our readers. To this end, we announced an open call for editors earlier this year and we hope to continue to expand our team of editors and guest contributors. Those interested in editorial or writing roles should contact james@digitalorientalist.com. Our traditional readership, however, needn’t worry we hope to remain true to our base in Islamic Studies. The Digital Orientalist, moreover, hopes that it will be able to contribute to the goals of AOS by showcasing digitally-oriented research on the Near East and Asia.

The Team for Academic Year 2019-2020

Returning Members

Founding member of the Digital Orientalist, Cornelis van Lit, continues in his role as owner of the magazine, and I am sure many will be pleased to hear that he will continue to make irregular, guest contributions over the coming year.

Regular readers will be aware that our Editor for Japan Studies, James Morris, will be taking the helm as Editor-in-Chief this year. He will also be continuing in his role as Editor for Japan Studies.

Deniz Çevik will continue in her role as Social Media Manager. We are also pleased to announce that after her popular post on “Making online interactive maps with Leaflet” last year, that Deniz will be making further guest contributions over the next academic year.

Charles Riley will continue in his role as our highly popular Editor of Africana. Charles’s posts on African languages such as “A close look at N’ko” and “Encoding the Bassa Vah script of Liberia” were highlights of the past academic year, and we look forward to similarly exciting content in the year to come.

New Members

Alex Mallett (Waseda University) will be taking over as our Editor for Islamic Studies. Many people will know Alex from his work on Brill’s Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History and his own cutting-edge research on the Crusades.

Giulia Buriola, a PhD Candidate at the Sapienza University of Rome, joins us as our first Editor of Indian Studies. Giulia’s current research surrounds the study of the Vaiṣṇava imagery and language in medieval, Sanskrit inscriptions from South India. She hopes to contribute posts on Classical Indology and its relation to the Digital Humanities.

From January 2020, Ephrem Ishac (Graz University and FSCIRE) will join us as our first Editor in Syriac Studies. Ephrem has published extensively on Syriac Christian Liturgy, and has been involved in numerous interreligious and ecumenical activities. He will be contributing posts on the often overlooked area of Syriac Studies and the Digital Humanities.

The team at one more glance:

 

Further Expansion

We continue to look for guest contributors and editors involved in all areas and particularly those engaged in research pertaining to Sinology, Central Asian Studies, Korean Studies, South East Asian Studies and other areas. For those interested please contact james@digitalorientalist.com.

Closing Thoughts

This year the Digital Orientalist will continue to expand into new areas, whilst trying to remain true to our history as a publication grounded in Islamic Studies. We are particularly pleased to have gained new editors in the fields of Indian Studies and Syriac Studies, and are also excited to continue to bring our readers engaging content related to African Studies, Islamic Studies, and Japanology. If there is anything, in particular, you would like to see, do not hesitate to reach out to us!