Lectures, Papers, Panels
Talks
Invited lectures and keynotes, conference papers, and the panels and workshops I have organized, from the annual sessions of St. Petersburg Arabists in 2002 to the present.

Invited Talks, Guest Lectures, Keynotes 40
2025
- April 2025Turkey · online
Islamicate Digital Humanities: What is it and Why Bother?
2024
- November 2024Germany
Future in the Past: Constructing the Social History of the Premodern Islamic World with Modern Computational Methods
- July 2024Germany
A Corpus-Driven Approach in Religious Studies: A Case Of Islam
- July 2024Germany
Digital Humanities in the context of Religious Studies
2023
- November 2023Spain
Teaching Computational Analysis with the ‘Prosopografía de ulemas de al-Andalus’
- October 2023Germany
Arabic biographical collections as a source for modeling social transformations, cultural production, and demography
2022
- April 2022Germany
Made by People, Tied by People: Modeling Islamic Urban Networks from Biographical Data (ca. 600–1300 CE)
- April 2022USA
To DB or not to DB: LOD-like Approach and Algorithmic Analysis
2021
- September 2021Germany
Prospects of Middle Eastern Studies in the Context of Digital Humanities
keynote
2020
- December 2020France · online
OpenITI mARkdown: Between Method and Standard
- November 2020Austria
Computational History and Historiography of the Medieval Islamic World
- November 2020Austria
Data Science & Digital Humanities: Modeling Arabic Written Tradition
- January 2020Austria
Algorithmic Analysis into Social History: A Case of Medieval Islamic History
2019
- September 2019Spain
“The Marvels of Old in the Digital World”: Toward the Methodological Turn in Middle Eastern Studies
- May 2019Lebanon
“Digital Dust of the Arabic Past”: Corpus-Based Research in Arabic & Islamic Studies
keynote - April 2019Russia
Arabic History & Historiography in the Digital Age
- February 2019Hungary
Arabic History & Historiography in the Digital Age
2018
- April 2018Qatar
“Iftaḥ Yā Simsim!” Finding Digital Keys to the Treasures of the Arabic Written Tradition
keynote - February 2018Austria
“Open Sesame!” Digital Analysis of the Arabic Written Tradition: Part I—On Social History
2017
- May 2017Netherlands
The Corpus, The Network, & The Book Continuum
- May 2017Netherlands
Computational Reading of Arabic Biographical Collections
- February 2017USA
Premodern Arabic Biographical Collections: A Digital Approach
- 2017Germany
Arabic Written Tradition & the Digital Humanities
2016
- November 2016USA
From Text to Map: Arabic Biographical Collections and Geospatial Analysis
- June 2016Germany
Future in the Past: Using Modern Computational Methods for the Analysis of Premodern Arabic Texts
- May 2016Germany
Annotation of Geographical Data
- April 2016Germany/USA
Discovering Spatial and Chronological Patterns in Historical Texts
- 2016USA
Writing a 50-volume book in 14th-century Damascus: Algorithmic Analysis, Text Reuse & the Arabic Written Tradition
2015
- December 2015USA/Netherlands
Arabic and Islamic Studies and the Digital Humanities
- February 2015USA
Digital Humanities & the Premodern Islamic World: Of Graphs, Maps, and 30,000 Muslims
- 2015–2016USA/Germany/UK
Of Graphs, Maps, and 30,000 Muslims: Premodern Arabic Texts & the Digital Humanities
2014
- August 2014USA
The Social Geography of the Islamic World (661–1300 CE): on the Method
- April 2014USA
Distant Reading of Arabic Biographical Collections
- April 2014USA
The Social Geography of the Islamic World (661–1300 CE)
- April 2014USA
Future in the Past: Using Digital Methods to Study Medieval Arabic Texts
- April 2014USA
Classical Arabic through the Words of the Prophet: Teaching Classical Arabic in the Digital Age
- March 2014USA
Studying Classical Arabic Sources in the Digital Age: Social Geography & Social History
- February 2014USA
Building a Historical Gazetteer
- February 2014USA
Connectedness of the Islamic World (661–1300 CE)
- 2014USA
Computational Reading of Classical Arabic Sources: the Case of Biographical Collections
Conference Papers and Presentations 66
2024
- October 2024UK
Navigating Seas of Biographies: A Computational Pipeline for Biography Identification in Historical Corpora (EIS1600 Project Paper)
- September 2024Germany
Data-Driven Periodization of Classical Arabic and the Arabic Written Tradition
- September 2024Germany
A Book of 30,000 Biographies: Computational Analysis of Sources of “The History of Islam” of al-Ḏahabī (d. 748/1348)
- August 2024Armenia
Digital Humanities for Arabic and Islamic Studies: what is it and why bother?
- June 2024USA
Modeling Social History: A Deep Learning Approach to Arabic Historical Tradition
poster - June 2024Germany
Text Reuse in the Arabic Written Tradition: A Case of Biographical Collections
- March 2024UAE
Computational typology of texts as a means of modeling the development of the Arabic written tradition
2023
- December 2023Japan
Ṣundūq al-ġarāʾib fī-l-ʿaṣr al-raqāʾim: Reading Medieval Texts in the Digital Age
- October 2023UK
Modelling the Development of Premodern Islamic Societies from Biographical and Historical Data
- September 2023Bulgaria
Enhancing State-of-the-Art NLP Models for Classical Arabic
- June 2023USA
OpenITI
mARkdown: Balancing Between a Standard and a Research Method - June 2023Germany
Finding and Linking Information in Arabic Historical Texts
- March 2023Germany
Algorithmic Analysis into Social History
2022
- September 2022Germany
Similarity-Based Networks for Islamicate Digital Humanities
- July 2022Germany
Modeling the Development of Premodern Islamic Societies through Computational Analysis of Written Sources
2021
- October 2021Germany
Being Pragmatic: Data and Authority Files in the OpenITI Corpus
- October 2021online
OpenITI: The Corpus for The Field
2020
- October 2020USA · online
One Source to Rule Them All: Constructing the Master Chronicle for Islamic History
- October 2020USA · online
Big Data and Mega Corpora in the Middle East Studies: The Case of Arabic Written Tradition
- August 2020Germany · online
Digital Humanities with non-European sources: The Case of Arabic
- July 2020Germany · online
OpenITI
2019
- October 2019USA/UK
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed: Computational Analysis of Writing Practices of Islamic Scholars
- July 2019Netherlands
Open Islamicate Texts Initiative: A Machine-Readable Corpus of Texts Produced in the Premodern Islamicate World
poster - July 2019Netherlands
al-Ṯurayyā, the Gazetteer and the Geo-Spatial Model of the Early Islamic World
- July 2019Netherlands
Orbis-in-a-box (OIB): Modeling Historical Geographical Networks
poster - June 2019Japan · online
Computational Historiography: al-Ḏahabī’s Taʾrīḫ al-islām and His Sources
- April 2019Russia
Interconnectedness of Texts and Computational Modeling of the Arabic Written tradition
- February 2019UK
Modeling Society from Text: a Method in Arabic Studies
2018
- December 2018Spain
al-Ḏahabī’s treatment of his Andalusi sources: toward understanding of compilation methods of medieval historians
- December 2018Netherlands
Prospects of Corpus-Based Research: Computational Methods and the OpenITI Corpus
- May 2018Italy
Modeling Arabic Written Tradition: Enhancing Traditional Text analysis with Computational Techniques
2017
- November 2017USA
Looking for the author behind the words: Stylometric Analysis of al-Ḏahabī’s (d. 1347) Writings
- October 2017Austria
Modeling Social History of the Premodern Islamic World
- September 2017Spain
Digital Humanities in the field of Islamic studies
- May 2017Italy
Why do we need a corpus and computational methods?
- April 2017United Arab Emirates
Algorithmic Analysis of Premodern Arabic Biographical Collections: Approach, Infrastructure, Open Data
- January 2017Germany
80/20: Facilitating Computational Analysis with Named-Entities Recognition
2016
- December 2016Spain
An Accidental Gazetteer: Linked Data for Historical Geography of the Classical Islamic World
- November 2016USA
Of A Network and A Node: ‘The History of Islam’ of al-Ḏahabī (d. 1348) and its place in the Premodern Arabic Textual Tradition
- September 2016USA
Presentation on Islamic[ate] DH Projects at Leipzig University
2015
- October 2015USA
“al-Ḏahabī’s Monster”: Dissecting a 50-Volume Arabic Chronicle-cum-Biographical Collection from the 14th Century CE
- September 2015UK
The Taʾrīḫ al-islām of al-Ḏahabī (d. 748/1347 CE): Computational Exploration of the Life-Cycle of a 50-Volume Arabic Chronicle-cum-Biographical Collection
- July 2015USA
Cultural Production in the Islamic World (600–1900 CE): mining an Ottoman bibliographical collection from the early 20th century
- May 2015USA
Analyzing Arabic Biographical Collections at Scale
- May 2015USA
The Writing Culture of Nīshāpūr in the 11th Century
2014
- November 2014USA
Exploring Islamic Written Legacy: Computational Reading of Hadiyyaŧ al-ʿārifīn
- March 2014USA
Computational Processing of Toponymic Data from classical Arabic Sources
- February 2014USA
Visualizing Islamic Geography at Scale
2013
- October 2013USA
Abstract Models for Islamic History
- October 2013USA
Islamic World Connected (661–1300 CE)
- April 2013USA
Toward Abstract Models for Islamic History
poster - March 2013USA
Exploratory Analysis of Arabic Biographical Collections: the Case of al-Ḏahabī's (d. 1347 CE) Taʾrīḫ al-islām
- February 2013USA
«Connectedness» of the Islamic World (600–1300 CE)
2012
- November 2012USA
Social History of the Muslim World in the Digital Age: Making Sense of 29,000 Biographies from al-Ḏahabī's «History of Islam»
- November 2012USA
Social History of the Muslim World in the Digital Age: Making Sense of 29,000 Biographies from al-Ḏahabī's «History of Islam»
poster - October 2012USA
Writing the Digital History of the Premodern Muslim World, 670–1300 CE: Exploratory Analysis of Primary Sources
- August 2012USA
Mining pre-Modern Islamic Sources
- April 2012Russia
Dreaming Ḥanbalites: Dream-Tales in Prosopographical Dictionaries
- April 2012Belgium
Digital History of the Muslim World: Computer-Aided Analysis of Biographical Dictionaries
2010
- November 2010USA
«Popular» Preaching in the Sunnī Context and the Legitimization of Waʿẓ in the Late 12th Century CE
2009
- November 2009USA
Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal's (d. 241/855) Argumentative Strategies
- April 2009USA
Dreaming Ḥanbalites
2004
- March 2004Russia
The Origins of the Term Ṣūfī
2003
- December 2003Russia
The Paradigm of the Science of Ḥadīṯ (ʿilm al-ḥadīṯ)
- April 2003Russia
Argumentation with Ḥadīṯ Reports in Ibn al-Jawzī’s Talbīs Iblīs (“Devil’s Delusions”)
2002
- April 2002Russia
Ibn al-Jawzī’s Image in the Western Scholarship
Panels, Workshops, and Roundtables Organized 13
2025
- July 2025Germany
From Classical ML to AI in Arabic and Islamic Studies: A Hands-On Workshop
2024
- September 2024Germany
Stylometry and the Digital Humanities: Unraveling Authorship and Periodization in Arabic Textual Traditions
2022
- September 2022Germany
Computational Contributions to the Social and Cultural Histories of the Islamicate World
2020
- July 2020Austria/UK · online
Stylometry Workshop with Maciej Eder
2019
- June 2019Japan
Approaching Mamlūk Historiography: Narratologically, Literarily, Computationally
2018
- July 2018Austria
ORBIS-esque Hackathon
2017
- November 2017USA
A New Corpus for the Islamicate World and Methods for Its Exploration
2016
- November 2016USA
Networked Texts: New Ways of Seeing the Arabic Textual Tradition (750–1500)
- November 2016USA
Non-traditional methods for Teaching Traditional Languages
2015
- December 2015Germany
Analyzing Text Reuse at Scale / Working with Big Humanities Data
- December 2015Germany
Digital Arabic and Digital Persian Research Workshop
2013
- November 2013USA
Digital Humanities in Middle East Studies
2010
- November 2010USA
Islamic Preaching