DADH 2018 - 9th International Conference of Digital Archives and Digital Humanities

The Digital Humanities is an emerging field of research, the term itself having only been coined in 2004. Notwithstanding the fact that research in this area is quite new, the digital humanities have been flourishing at an unprecedented rate. In recent years, whether in Europe, America, Asia or Taiwan, various research institutes and teams dedicated to research and development in the digital humanities have been established. This demonstrates the high level of interest in and importance attached to this field by the community.
The core concept of the field of digital humanities is the application of modern digital technologies to the disciplines of the traditional humanities, in order to overcome the limitations of traditional research methodologies. This combination of knowledge and technology, in an interdisciplinary manner, is unachievable in any single area. The development of the field of digital humanities is in fact indissociable from the progress of new digital technologies. These new technologies not only provide new methods of data analysis, but can also be used to create new types of digital resources.
In recent years, major breakthroughs have been made in the field of artificial intelligence. Various types of A.I. technologies have gradually evolved from theoretical speculation into concrete reality with practical applications, with remarkable results. However, to answer what the intelligence is makes A.I. deeply related to humanities. For example, Natural Language Processing technology in A.I. assembles an important subdomain of linguistics — computational linguistics. Besides, A.I. technologies which mimic the structure of human intelligence, such as the Semantic Web, Ontology, the Knowledge Graph, Linked Open Data, are based on the theory of ontology in philosophy.
What kind of applications and breakthroughs can these digital technologies bring to the digital humanities? How should humanities scholars view the results of an artificial intelligence based on digital resources? Compared to traditional humanities studies which only consider a limited corpus of text, artificial intelligence can process a large body of data, with the exception of a limited number of research methods. In the last analysis, do these new technologies provide more help for the study of the humanities, or are their results unconvincing? All these topics are subjects this conferences seeks to examine and discuss.
Given the growth of the field of the digital humanities, this conference will continue over the years to research every facet of the digital humanities, but will also include the topic of ‘Facing the Era of AI+DH’ as its theme. We invite scholars and experts, at home and abroad, to participate in this session, and look forward to creating new milestones in digital studies through dialog and exchange.