The Digital Orientalist is back from our summer hiatus!
This past academic year marked another great year for the Digital Orientalist! Our diverse team of editors grew significantly, with brilliant scholars joining us from all over the globe. Thanks to our superb editorial team, we were able to publish two contributions each week and drew a wider audience from beyond Europe and North America. To read more about our exciting accomplishments from last year, please click here.
In July 2021, we were lucky to have received many excellent submissions to our Open Call for Editors. Today, we are extremely excited to announce the new editorial lineup for the Digital Orientalist!
The Team for Academic Year 2021-2022
Returning Members
As the founder and owner of the Digital Orientalist, Cornelis van Lit will continue to serve as the leader of the project and offer foundation support for our growing team. He will also be occasionally contributing posts on digital humanities for us. His post, “ScanTailor: Installation Instructions and Impressions,” was one of the most widely read posts from last year.
Daigengna Duoer will be taking over the responsibilities as Editor-in-Chief starting this academic year. Daigengna joined the Digital Orientalist in September 2020 and has been contributing as an editor in Mongolian Studies in the past year. She wrote on Mongolia-related digital resources, such as “Mapping A Thousand Buddhist Monasteries in Mongolia: Introducing the Digital Database “Documentation of Mongolian Monasteries.”
James Harry Morris will be taking on the new role of Managing Editor in Northeast Asian Studies starting this year. James has been serving as the Editor-in-Chief for the Digital Orientalist over the past two years and has contributed content frequently. His post, “Digital Resources for Japanese Palaeography,” was also one of the most popular posts of last year.
Jonathan Robker will be serving as our Managing Editor in Middle Eastern and North East African Studies beginning this year. Having joined the Digital Orientalist in September 2020, Jonathan was our inaugural Editor for Biblical Studies. “Digitized Hebrew and Greek Manuscripts: Access and Issues” was one of his best works from 2020.
Mariana Zorkina, a PhD Candidate at Zurich University, will also be taking over the role of Managing Editor but in Sinology. She joined us in September 2020 as an Editor for Sinology and has written posts such as “Defining word boundaries for Modern and Classical Chinese.” She was also one of the organizers of the Digital Orientalist Virtual Conference and Workshop 2021.
Maddalena Poli, a PhD Candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, will be serving as our Social Media Manager this year. She joined us in September 2020 as a Contributor for Sinology and has written posts such as “Some Reflections on Online Resources for Chinese Palaeography.” The Digital Orientalist Virtual Conference and Workshop 2021 turned out to be a great success under the organization of Maddalena and Mariana Zorkina.
Fatma Aladağ, a PhD Candidate at Leipzig University, will continue to serve as our Editor for Ottoman Studies. Her research focuses on the Ottoman Empire and Ottoman cities in the 16th century, Digital Urban Studies, and Geographic Information Systems. Her post, “Deciphering Ottoman Turkish Manuscripts with LexiQamus,” was one of the most widely-read posts of last year.
Matthew Hayes will join our team again in the capacity of Editor for Japanese Studies. He joined the Digital Orientalist in 2020 and served as our first Editor for Buddhist Studies. His post, “A Digital Introduction to the Chinese Buddhist Canon” was a big hit for us last year.
Ephrem Ishac will continue in his role as our Editor for Syriac Studies. As one of the most experienced editors in our team, Ephrem has written popular posts such as “An Introduction to the History of Syriac Digital Humanities.”
Elizabeth Lee, a PhD Candidate at New York University, will continue as our first Editor for Korean Studies. Specialized in Buddhist art in the Korean context, Elizabeth has published great posts such as “DH in Korea: The Digital Humanities Lab at the Academy of Korean Studies.”
Shiva Mihan is returning to the Digital Orientalist as our Editor for Iranian Studies. As the Schroeder Curatorial Fellow of Islamic Art at Harvard Art Museums, she has been contributing fascinating posts on art digitization such as “Pote Collection of Islamic Manuscripts: The Online Catalogue.”
Adrian Plau will continue to serve as our Editor for Indian Studies. As a Manuscript Collections Information Analyst at the Wellcome Collection, London, he works on making Wellcome’s global manuscript collections more accessible. Adrian has written helpful posts on DH practice such as “Time and pragmatism in the digital humanities: TEI and Juxta Commons for South Asian manuscript collation.”
Lu Wang, a PhD Candidate at Western University, will continue to write for us as Editor for Sinology. Her interest in the application of digital research methods to Chinese studies has produced informative posts such as “Data Cleaning Chinese Text with OpenRefine.”
New Members:
Elizabeth Bishop, is joining our team as the Editor for North African Studies. She specializes in the history of the Middle East, Postcolonial Arab history, and the history of the Global Cold War. She is currently an Associate Professor in the History Department at Texas State University.
Udita Das, will be joining DO as Editor for Indian Buddhism. She has been based in the University of New Delhi but will be joining a graduate program at Northwestern University in the fall.
Bryce Heatherly, will be our inaugural Editor for Chinese Material Culture. He is a PhD student in the East Asian Languages and Civilizations department of the University of Pennsylvania studying the visual and material cultures of China’s Middle Period (8th-15th centuries). At DO, he aims to explore digital tools for image annotation and their uses for understanding and conveying the relationship between visual materials and narrative.
So Miyagawa, is joining the Digital Orientalist as our Editor for North East African Studies. So is an assistant professor teaching digital humanities and Ancient Egyptian and Coptic at Kyoto University. He is also a digital humanist working on the digitization of Ancient Egyptian and Coptic manuscripts and text corpora. Currently, So is working on an online corpus platform for Old Nubian as well.
Thomas Newhall, will be joining us as the new Editor for Buddhist Studies. Thomas is a PhD candidate in Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on how Buddhist law codes were interpreted and adapted for Buddhist monastic life in China, and East Asia more broadly.
Michele Eduarda Brasil de Sá, is our new Editor for Japanese Studies. She is currently a professor in the College of Arts, Letters and Communication at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, where she leads the Group of Transdisciplinary Research about Japan. Her research interests include Japanese immigration to Brazil, Japanese and nikkei literature, Jesuit documents and books written in Japan (16th and 17th century), online resources for teaching in the university, and translation studies.
Theodora Zampaki, is joining us as Editor for Greco-Arabic Studies. She has been working as a tutor at the Hellenic Open University since 2017 and is currently teaching and supervising students enrolled in the course ‘Introduction to Arabic Language and Culture’ of the postgraduate program ‘Language Education for Refugees and Migrants’ in the Hellenic Open University. Her research interests focus on Graeco-Arabic Studies, history and culture of the Arabs and Arabic historiography.
Closing Thoughts
With a larger and more diverse team, we have no doubt that the Digital Orientalist will continue to grow and create original content for our amazing readers. We are also extremely excited about the addition of new fields brought by our new members.
Please stay tuned for our lineup of posts, events, and more! Please also feel free to reach out to us if there is anything you would like to see!
Here’s to another memorable year!
The Digital Orientalist 