The Digital Orientalist’s Recap of 2020

In 2020, we at The Digital Orientalist have continued to grow our editorial team and our readership. Today we will share some important posts from the last year and offer a recap of our achievements in 2020. We hope that you have all enjoyed reading The Digital Orientalist in 2020, and that you will continue to enjoy reading it in the new year!

Events and Developments

Here is our recap of the important developments of the past year.

• In February, members of The Digital Orientalist‘s editorial team, L. W. Cornelis van Lit, James H. Morris and Deniz Çevik, published a paper entitled “A Digital Revival of Oriental Studies” in ICLEA. The paper can be read here.

• In April, we launched a redesigned version of our website.
• Also in April, we released our self-published proceedings for last year’s The Digitial Orientalisms Twitter Conference (#DOsTC). These proceedings can be viewed and downloaded from our publications page.
• Following the success of our first Twitter Conference in 2019, we held The Digital Orientalisms Twitter Conference 2020 (#DOsTC2020) on June 20th. The conference featured English and multi-lingual papers from speakers based in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. The conference proceedings can be accessed here.
• On September 1st, we announced new additions to our editorial team including:
  • Fatma Aladağ as Editor for Ottoman Studies.
  • Daigengna Duoer as Editor for Mongolian Studies.
  • Julie A. Hanlon as Editor for Indian Studies.
  • Matthew Hayes as Editor for Buddhist Studies.
  • Sarah Ketchley as Editor for DH in Practice.
  • Elizabeth Lee as Editor for Korean Studies.
  • Shiva Mihan as Contributor for Iranian Studies.
  • Adrian Plau as Contributor for Indian Studies.
  • Maddalena Poli as Contributor for Sinology.
  • Jonathan Robker as Editor for Biblical Studies.
  • Claudia Simonelli as Contributor for Syriac Studies.
  • Lu Wang as Contributor for Sinology.
  • Ahmet Yusuf Yuksek as Contributor for Ottoman Studies.
  • Mariana Zorkina as Editor for Sinology.

• Also on September 1st, we announced our intention publish two contributions per week (every Tuesday and Friday).
• On October 1st, Editor-in-Chief, James H. Morris presented on The Digital Orientalist at the “Taking Japanese Studies Online” Webinar organized by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures.
• In December, L. W. Cornelis van Lit was awarded the KNVI (Koninklijke Nederlandse Vereniging van Informatieprofessionals) Victorine van Schaick Penning for his Among Digitized Manuscripts: Philology, Codicology, Paleography in a Digital World.
• Throughout 2020, we were thrilled that Digital Humanities Now featured 9 of our posts in its Resources section and 8 of our posts in its Editor’s Choice section.

Popular Posts of 2020

Here are The Digital Orientalist‘s 6 most popular posts written by regular editors and contributors in 2020.

1. “A Digital Introduction to the Chinese Buddhist Canon,” by Editor for Buddhist Studies, Matthew Hayes. Published on September 4th.
2. “Deciphering Ottoman Turkish Manuscripts with LexiQamus,” by Editor for Ottoman Studies, Fatma Aladağ. Published on November 24th.
3. “An Introduction to the History of Syriac Digital Humanities,” by Editor for Syriac Studies, Ephrem Ishac. Published on January 30th.
4. “ScanTailor: Installation Instructions and Impressions,” by owner of The Digital Orientalist, L. W. Cornelis van Lit. Published on March 9th.
5. “Digital Resources for Japanese Palaeography,” by Editor-in-Chief, James H. Morris. Published on October 31st.
6. “Visualizing North China Under Japanese Occupation: Digitized Photos of the North China Railway Archive,” by Editor for Mongolian Studies, Daigengna Duoer. Published on November 27th.

Great Posts You Might Have Missed

Here are 5 awesome posts from 2020 that you may have missed.

1. “The role of digital tools in relation to understanding Meroitic,” by Editor for African Studies, Charles Riley. Published on September 18th.
2. “Back to the Sources: The First Steps in (Digital) Projects,” by Contributor for Syriac Studies, Claudia Simonelli. Published on December 4th.
3. “Once upon a Camera…,” by former Editor for Indian Studies, Giulia Buriola. Published on February 6th.
4. “Digitized Hebrew and Greek Manuscripts: Access and Issues,” by Editor for Biblical Studies, Jonathan Robker. Published on December 1st.
5. “Time and pragmatism in the digital humanities: TEI and Juxta Commons for South Asian manuscript collation,” by Contributor for Indian Studies, Adrian Plau. Published on September 22nd.

Guest Posts

This year we had the pleasure of featuring a number of great guest contributions, including:

• “Some notes on the usability of the Zotero Reference Manager for Historical Research,” by Jasper Bernhofer. Published on February 28th.
• “Digital Humanities Japan: Building Community and Sharing Resources,” by Paula R. Curtis, Hoyt Long, Molly Des Jardin and Mark Ravina. Published on April 27th.
• “Dissertating in the Digital Age: Research and Writing Tools for Organization and Productivity,” by Bihter Esener. Published on May 4th.
• “Digital Resources for the Study of Japanese Archaeology,” by James Loftus. Published on October 27th.
• “Social Scientific Applications of Historical GIS,” by Emre Amasyali. Published in two parts on November 6th and November 20th.