Crossing Boundaries: New Frontiers in Digital Humanities for Islamicate Research

Abstract

As digital technology has become ubiquitous and more and more data is becoming available in electronic form, The Journal of Digital Islamicate Research (JDIR) will brand itself in academia through a unique approach that integrates computational-social science and humanities. This integration aims to introduce scholars and students to a developing field that is evolving rapidly. The proliferation of digital data presents remarkable opportunities for establishing vigorous collaboration across disciplines to address the “science of culture” through the methods of the new fields including Cultural Analytics and Digital Humanities. These interdisciplinary collaborations are not just beneficial but necessary for advancing our understanding of cultural dynamics in the digital age. By leveraging computational and empirical analysis of social sciences and humanities data, such new fields aim to adapt and refine computational, visualization, and big data methods for the exploration of both contemporary and historical cultures and their products. This adaptation, as explained, for example, in Manovich 2020, is particularly pertinent to the emerging field of Middle Eastern and Islamic Digital Humanities (DH). In this context, JDIR aims to apply advanced digital methodologies to the rich cultural heritage and contemporary cultural practices of the Middle Eastern and Islamic worlds, thus contributing to a deeper, more nuanced understanding of these regions.