Processing Ancient Text Corpora
17 - 21 February 2020
Venue: Lorentz Center@Snellius
If you are invited or already registered for this workshop, you have received login details by email.This workshop aims to promote scholarly exchange and to build a community of scholars with an interest in digital humanities and ancient texts. Research into ancient texts undergoes strong development: the application of ever more methods from statistics and machine learning. Given the fact that the text disciplines are organized by language, rather than by method, we think the methodological exchange can be strengthened. The sharing of IT techniques is a natural playground for this, but only a starting point. Theoretically, we need to discuss where these methods bring us. Are big data methods also applicable to small data? What is particular about the fact that the texts of interest are historical? Practically we want to discuss how we can optimally employ IT methods. Can we assess the landscape of IT and make an informed selection of the regions that are most useful to us?
The programme will move from a deductive primer of various corpora to an in-depth discussion on research questions and the digital tools for addressing these questions. It will move from corpora specimens to data structures and text models, and from there to analytical techniques. The in-depth discussion will deal with narratives from research questions through data models and analytical techniques to results or the absence of results. Sharing these narratives among people working in different linguistic, literary and historical disciplines will lead to reflection: where does it leave us? Do we see tools, toolkits that we all can use, mutatis mutandis? What are the limits of data-driven research, or put otherwise, which part of the problem do they solve and which part not? How are digital techniques evolving, and how can we keep up with developments? How can an individual master the necessary skills, how can a team acquire them?
Monday 17 February
Introduction
09:00 – 09:30 Arrival, registration
09:30 – 09:45 Welcome by the Lorentz Centre
09:45 – 10:15 Ice Breaker Game
10:15 – 10:30 Introduction to the programme – Wido van Peursen
10:30 – 11:20 Teaser / introductory paper: Graph models for text – Elli Bleeker and Ronald Dekker
Part One: Corpora
A. Corpora: Primer
11:20 – 11:40 Sanskrit anonymous literature – Peter Bisschop
11:40 – 12:00 Cuneiform (Uruk, Babylonian) – Cale Johnson
12:00 – 12:20 Old Testament / Hebrew Bible – Eep Talstra
12:30 – 14:30 Lunch @Snellius restaurant
14:15 – 14:30 Arrival of additional guests just for the Monday afternoon
14:30 – 14:50 Syriac Texts – Wido van Peursen
14:50 – 15:10 New Testament and Patristic literature – Ernst Boogert
15:10 – 15:30 Incantation Bowls –¬ Margaretha Folmer
15:30 – 16:00 Coffee break
16:00 – 17:00 Informal discussions: corpora, research, various problems and challenges
17:00 – Wine and cheese party
Tuesday February 18
B. Corpora: in-depth discussion
09:30 – 11:00 In-depth discussions: breakout-sessions on shared problems and challenges
11:00 – 11:30 Break
11:30 – 12:00 Feedback from break-out sessions
12:00 – 13:45 Lunch @Snellius restaurant
Part Two: Data structure and text model
13:45 – 14:45 The ETCBC data model – Constantijn Sikkel
14:45 – 15:30 Bible Online Learner – Nicolai Winther Nielsen
15:30 – 16:00 Coffee break
16:00 – 16:45 Corpora, annotation, and Text-Fabric – Cody Kingham, Dirk Roorda
16:45 – 17:45 Informal discussions: modeling, computing, various problems and challenges
Wednesday February 19
09:00 – 10:30 In-depth discussions: breakout-sessions on shared problems and challenges
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 – 11:30 Feedback from break-out sessions
11:30 – 13:00 Hands-on session in small groups: ETCBC workflow / Bible OL / Text-Fabric
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch @Snellius restaurant
14:30 – 15:30 Feedback from break-out sessions and plenary discussion (chaired by Cody Kingham) on the agreements and differences between the various approaches, their advantages and disadvantages and the question how we should anticipate future developments.
15:30 - 17:30 Open space: discussions, hands-on, study
17:30 - 21:30 Boat trip (including dinner)
Thursday February 20
Part Three: Corpus analysis
09:00 – 10:00 Improvised Pitches: New ideas that surface after the first three days – first come first serve
10:00 – 10:20 Image processing, facsimiles – Cornelis van Lit
10:20 – 10:40 Where do you mean? Improving BHSA with Vector Semantics – Cody Kingham
10:40 – 11:00 Text-Fabric and coreference/participant analysis – Christiaan Erwich
11:00 – 11:30 Break
11:30 – 11:50 Machine Learning – Mathias Coeckelbergs
11:50 – 12:10 Onomastics – Elizabeth Robar
12:10 – 12:30 Computational Stylometry – Pierre Van Hecke
12:30 – 12:50 Data and ontology modeling and the ReIReS project – Roxanne Wyns
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch @Snellius restaurant
14:30 – 15:30 In-depth discussions: breakout-sessions on shared problems and challenges
15:30 – 16:00 Break
16:00 – 16:30 Feedback from break-out sessions
16:30 - Open space: discussions, hands-on, study
Friday February 21
Part Four: Making knowledge accessible
09:00 – 09:20 Making digital manuscript scholarship accessible – Cornelis van Lit
09:20 – 09:40 SHEBANQ and TF in education – Oliver Glanz
09:40 – 10:00 Teaching Theological students to use Text-Fabric – Christian H. Jensen
10:00 – 10:20 TFbuilder: a generic Python library to build TF datasets from TEI XML and CSV – Ernst Boogert
10:20 – 10:50 Break
10:50 – 11:30 Building a digital text archive for a large community – Gregory Crane, James Tauber
11:30 – 12:00 General discussion
12:00 – 13:30 Lunch @Snellius restaurant
Conclusion
13:30 – 14:30 Keynote Perspective from another discipline: Sandjai Bhulai
We all know that ancient text corpora harbor an enormous amount of complexity. But there are more complex systems than that. Does the study of social media, business planning and economy offer us paradigms and tools to tackle the history of ancient texts?
Sandjai Bhulai is full professor of Business Analytics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He studied "Mathematics" and "Business Mathematics and Informatics", and obtained a PhD on Markov decision processes for the control of complex, high-dimensional systems.
Sandjai's research is on the interface of mathematics, computer science, and operations management. His specialization is in decision making under uncertainty, optimization, data science, and business analytics.
14:30 – 15:00 General discussion
