Dr Pieter Francois gave an invited lecture to the faculty and students of Digital Humanities at Nanjing University. His talk focused on ‘Distant Reading for European Literary History’ and the ‘Seshat: Global History Databank’ project. After the talk the lively discussions continued in the tea house afterwards. He and Professor Jing Chen left the tea house with a number of specific plans to introduce their projects to a wider audience in China.
Professor Chen’s project on the Historical Geographic Information System for Six Dynasties is, for example, one of the finest examples of a full integration of archaeological, material culture and textual data that is made accessibly through spatial querying. It is also an absolute labour of love for Prof Chen and his students.
