The Digital Orientalist’s Recap of 2019

The last year was quite eventful for the Digital Orientalist. It saw a large growth in readership, expansion into new areas, and a series of interesting developments. In this post, we will recap some of the major events and posts of last year. We hope you enjoyed reading the Digital Orientalist in 2019, and that you will continue to enjoy reading it in 2020.

Major Events

There were several large events and announcements during 2019. Here is our recap of important developments over the past year.

• In March, the Digital Orientalist gained the position of 2nd Runner-up in the category of “Best DH Blog Post or Series of Posts” for the Digital Humanities Award 2018.
• On June 1st, the Digital Orientalist held the Digital Orientalisms Twitter Conference (#DOsTC), an academic conference based on Twitter which included participants from Europe, North America, and East Asia. The proceedings for the conference can be read here.
• On July 4th, the founder of the Digital Orientalist, Cornelis van Lit, announced his retirement from the position of Editor-in-Chief.
• On September 2nd, the Digital Orientalist announced its affiliation with the American Oriental Society.

• Also on September 2nd, the Digital Orientalist announced new additions to its editorial team including Alex Mallett as Editor for Islamic Studies, Giulia Buriola as Editor of Indian Studies, and Ephrem Ishac as Editor in Syriac Studies. James Morris took over as Editor-in-Chief.
• In November, Cornelis van Lit published his Among Digitized Manuscripts. Philology, Codicology, Paleography in a Digital World.

Popular Posts

This year we had a number of popular posts from regular contributions. Here is our pick of some of the highlights:

• In January, Deniz Çevik kicked off the year with a post entitled “Making online interactive maps with Leaflet.”
• In February, Maksim Abdul Latif posted “Google Translate with One Click.” This became the most read post of 2019.
• In March, Charles Riley posted “A close look at N’ko,” and Megan Lewis posted “Online Resources for Ancient Mesopotamia?“
• In July, Cornelis van Lit posted “What is it like to be at a digital humanities conference?“
• October included our first post from Indian Studies Editor, Giulia Buriola, with her piece entitled “Online Resources for Indian Studies,” and our first post from new Islamic Studies Editor, Alex Mallett, with his “GSM: A Lesson for Beginners by a Beginner.”
• Closing the year James Morris posted “Japanese Studies and the Digital Humanities: Who to Follow on Twitter in 2020,” in December.

Guest Posts

This year the Digital Orientalist featured a number of guest posts, including;

• Louise Gallorini‘s “On books and electricity,” in March.
• Christine Roughan’s highly popular “Using Kraken to Train your own OCR Models,” and  Zach Chrisman‘s “Online Ritual Web Traffic and the Hindu Diaspora,” in November.