In November, Ars Inquirendi convenes over thirty scholars from around the world to answer two questions: In the era of large language models, what can we now discover about the pre-print past that we could not before, and what would justify believing it? Join us, in person in Oxford or online, to explore the rapid advances in what models can do and how scholars use them.
In November, Ars Inquirendi convenes over thirty scholars from around the world to answer two questions: In the era of large language models, what can we now discover about the pre-print past that we could not before, and what would justify believing it? Join us, in person in Oxford or online, to explore the rapid advances in what models can do and how scholars use them. The conference moves from charting the evidence of the pre-print world and considering how we make it available to LLMs that have so far seen only a fraction of it, as machines learn with startling speed to interpret our artefacts en masse, through historical inquiry at machine scale, to scholarly sovereignty over the new technology.
All talks except the live keynotes and workshops are pre-recorded and released a week ahead, leaving the live days for discussion.
Keynotes:
Marieke Meelen (University of Cambridge): Language Models for Cultural Heritage: a Case Study in Historical Tibetan
Peter Turchin (Complexity Science Hub Vienna & University of Oxford): A Socio-Technical System for Investigating the Dynamics of Political Instability
Registration (open to all; in-person places are limited, so we recommend early registration): online £10; in person £60 (student or unwaged £25); in person with the conference dinner on 21 November £100 (student or unwaged £60). All in-person tickets include refreshments on all three days, sandwich lunches on 20 and 21 November, and full online access.
Full programme, times and abstracts, and registration: https://www.arsinq.com
Enquiries: arsinquirendi@gmail.com
Convened with Oxford Medieval Studies, the Instituto de Historia–CSIC (Madrid) and the Plus Ultra Collective.Programm
Day 1 Friday 20 November: Graphosphere and Beyond
09:15–09:30 Conference Opening and Welcome
Henrike Lähnemann (University of Oxford)
09:30–12:00 Using LLMs in Scholarship (Workshop)
Thomas D. Grant (University of Cambridge)
13:00–16:15 Mapping the Old World Graphosphere, and Beyond
Chair: Roger Martínez-Dávila (University of Colorado & Plus Ultra Collective)
Keynote: Marieke Meelen (University of Cambridge): Language Models for Cultural Heritage: a Case Study in Historical Tibetan
Irina A. Zhilina (Central Branch of the Russian State University of Justice named after V. M. Lebedev, Voronezh): When Beauty Was a Ribbon: Can Large Language Models Read Church Slavonic Lexicography Without Inventing Semantic Continuity?
Dmitri Sitchinava (University of Potsdam): From Variant Place-Names to Machine-Readable Borderlands: LLM-Assisted Extraction of Slavic Toponymy in Livonia before 1700
Sarah Bowen Savant (Aga Khan University): Work References across the OpenITI
Colin Brisson (École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE)): The CHAT models and the Numerica Sinologica work on Dunhuang material
Amba Kulkarni (IIT Hyderabad): Sanskrit computational linguistics and LLMs (TBC)
Xuelong Li, with Zheng Liu, Tieshan Zhang & Yu Weng (Minzu University of China): Reassembling Dunhuang: Reading Old World Written Cultures at LLM Scale
David Owen (Harvard University): The Saharan Archive as Stress Test: Confabulation and Paleographic Possibility in a Neglected Manuscript Tradition
Victoria Fendel (University of Oxford): Universality and diversity inter- and intra-lingually: Adapting the PARSEME 2.0 guidelines for Multi-Word Expressions to corpus languages (Greek, Latin)
Yitian Li, with Ying Zhong & Stuart M. McManus (The Chinese University of Hong Kong): Cross-Cultural Analytics from the Ground Up: Building a Machine-Readable Corpus of Early China-Western Encounters
Joined by Marieke Meelen (University of Cambridge, keynote) and Eltjo Buringh (Utrecht University)
16:30–18:30 Scholarly Presentation: From Editions to Graphs
Chair: Elizabeth Solopova (University of Oxford)
Laura Morreale (Independent scholar): Automated Transcription of Medieval Italian Account Books
Karen Pinto (University of Colorado Boulder): Digital Odysseys with Islamicate Maps (TBC)
John Boyer (Loyola University New Orleans): Homer for Pleasure, Aristotle for Study: What Agentic Coding Makes Possible for Scholarly Digital Editions
Badr Hamed Al-Harbi (Independent researcher, Saudi Arabia), with Abdulaziz Suleiman Al-Harbi (Yale University): From Textual Criticism to AI Criticism: Evaluating Source Fidelity in AI-Generated Islamic Knowledge
Wojciech Witowski (Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków): Forgery before AI: Querying the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals with LLMs
Joined by Andrew Dunning (University of Oxford) and Colin Brisson (École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE))
Day 2 Saturday 21 November: Machine-Scale History
09:00–12:00 Vibe-Coding for Medievalists (Workshop)
Sebastian Dows-Miller (University College London)
13:00 – up to 18:45 Machine-Scale History
Keynote: Peter Turchin (Complexity Science Hub Vienna & University of Oxford): A Socio-Technical System for Investigating the Dynamics of Political Instability
David Zbíral, with Zoltan Brys, Robert L. J. Shaw & Gideon Kotzé (Masaryk University): Recovering Dispersed Dissent: LLM-Assisted Extraction of Religious Authority Contestation from Medieval Inquisition Archives (1243–1522)
Eltjo Buringh, with Auke Rijpma (Utrecht University): The Prevalence of Medieval Capital Goods from Manuscript Illustrations, 800–1600
Roger Martínez-Dávila (University of Colorado & Plus Ultra Collective): Across the Archive and the Atlantic: Reconstructing Jewish and Converso Kinship Networks with LLMs
Stephen Pink: QUINCUNX: A Discovery Engine for Pre-Print-Era Studies and other Sparse Domains, & Where They Join
Radek Stefanski (University of St Andrews): Cultural Capital and the Productivity of Ideas: Evidence from Historical Texts
Remy Levin, with Daniela Vidart (University of Connecticut): The Yeoman’s Portfolio: Measuring Historical Risk Preferences Using Crop Choice
Xuelong Li (Minzu University of China), with Zimeng Qu (Renmin University of China): A Pre-Print Information System in Qing Governance: Computational History of the Yongzheng Vermilion-Rescript Memorials
Benjamin James Riddle (Independent researcher): The Invisible House: Agentic Prosopography and the Recovery of Dispersed Medieval Kinship
Maxim Romanov (University of Hamburg): ‘Total Reading’ for Islamicate Culture, and Its Relevance to Other Old World Cultures (TBC)
Fabio Celli (Maggioli S.p.A.): Using Large Language Models for historical data processing: the good, the bad, and the bias
Joined by Peter Turchin (Complexity Science Hub Vienna & University of Oxford, keynote)
19:45 Conference dinner
Day 3 Sunday 22 November: Sovereignty
09:00–11:00 Customizing LLMs (Workshop)
Ben Kiessling (École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) & Inria)
11:15–12:45 Sovereign Models
Achim Rabus (University of Freiburg): Next-generation Handwritten Text Recognition, Agentic Coding, and Digital Sovereignty
Sebastian Nehrdich (Tohoku University): Dharmamitra: scope, conceptually and technically, and how the approach carries to other Old World written cultures
Zoe Bartliff (University of Glasgow): Born-digital archives: appraisal, selection and loss in the archives being made now (TBC)
Donald Sturgeon (Durham University): The Chinese Text Project and the machine learning behind it (TBC)
Joined by Ben Kiessling (École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) & Inria), Damon Wischik (University of Cambridge), Daniele Nardi (Sapienza University of Rome), Fabio Celli (Maggioli S.p.A.), Katryna Peart (AI historiographer & evaluator) and Victoria Fendel (University of Oxford)
13:15–14:30 Ethics, Attribution and the Digital Priesthood
Chair: Katryna Peart (AI historiographer & evaluator)
Joined by Lapo Lappin (University of Oslo), Migle Laukyte (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Thomas D. Grant (University of Cambridge) and other conference participants
15:00–17:00 Working together with AI agents
Chair: Sarah Bowen Savant (Aga Khan University)
Joined by Daniele Nardi (Sapienza University of Rome), Rohan Nallan (Aevronlabs) and all conference participants
17:00 Conference close
All times are Oxford time (GMT). All talks except the live keynotes and workshops are pre-recorded and released a week ahead, leaving the live days for discussion. Programme subject to change; full programme with abstracts at https://www.arsinq.com
Source : H-Soz-Kult
