Maxim Romanov

Courses, Workshops, Supervision

Teaching

Courses in history and digital methods taught in Hamburg, Vienna, Leipzig, Boston, and Ann Arbor; intensive workshops and summer schools; and the theses I have supervised.

A teacher seated on a throne addresses five students holding open books, painted in the manner of a medieval Arabic manuscript
After a Kalīla wa-Dimna manuscript · AI-generated

My teaching combines substantive historical inquiry with methodological literacy. I see training in computational approaches not as a technical specialization but as an extension of core historical skills: working critically with sources, evaluating evidence, and formulating historically grounded arguments. Methodological training is embedded in real research questions rather than taught in isolation, and students work with real historical materials, moving between interpretive reading and structured analysis. Most of my methods courses are explicitly transferable across periods and regional specializations, and several of them are published as open course websites linked below.

Courses

  1. 2023–2024Historical methods · DH

    Computational Analysis of Data from Audition Certificates, with R

    Universität Hamburg · Winter 2023/24

    Co-taught in tandem with Konrad Hirschler’s course, using data from the Audition Certificates Platform.

    Course site

  2. 2023Historical methods · DH

    Digital Humanities in African-Asian Studies: Analysis of Prosopographical Data with R

    Universität Hamburg · Summer 2023

    Built around the Prosopografía de ulemas de al-Andalus (eea.csic.es/pua).

    Course site

  3. 2022Historical methods · DH

    Text Analysis in R

    Universität Hamburg · Summer 2022

    Course site

  4. 2022Historical methods · DH

    Digital Humanities in Middle Eastern Studies

    Universität Hamburg · Winter 2021/22

    Course site

  5. 2021GIS · DH

    GIS Inquiries with R

    University of Vienna · Summer 2021 (SE seminar, PM 3)

    Course site

  6. 2017–2020Historical methods · DH

    DH Methods: Historical Inquiries with R

    University of Vienna · Summer 2020 (text analysis module), Summer 2019, Winter 2017/18 (SE seminar, PM 3)

    Course site (2020)

  7. 2018–2020DH

    Tools and Techniques for Digital Humanities

    University of Vienna · Winter 2020, Summer 2019, Summer 2018 (KU Methodenkurs)

  8. 2018History

    Of Arabs, Persians and Turks: Patterns of Dynastic Rule in the Islamic World (c. 600–1600 CE)

    University of Vienna · Summer 2018 (MA Proseminar)

  9. 2017–2018History

    The Near East at the Time of the First Crusade, 1045–1144

    University of Vienna · Winter 2017/18 (BA Proseminar), co-taught with Tara Andrews

  10. 2017–2018History

    The Medieval Near East and Europe according to Muslims, Christians, and Jews: Comparative Perspectives

    University of Vienna · Winter 2017/18 (seminar), co-taught with Tara Andrews

  11. 2016–2017Islamicate texts · DH

    Islamicate World 2.0: Studying Islamic Cultures through Computational Textual Analysis

    University of Maryland (College Park) and Leipzig University · Winter 2016/17, co-taught with Matthew Thomas Miller

  12. 2015Classical Arabic · DH

    Classical Arabic Through the Words of the Prophet

    Tufts University · Spring 2015

    An introduction to classical Arabic through the corpus of Ḥadīṯ, taught from a frequency-based reader generated for the course.

  13. 2014–2015Text analysis · DH

    Introduction to Text Mining for Students of the Humanities

    Tufts University · 2014–2015

  14. 2014History · DH

    Mapping the Classical Islamic World

    Tufts University · Winter 2014

    Digital project: mapping data from al-Muqaddasī’s geographical treatise (10th century CE).

  15. 2012History · DH

    The First Millennium of the Islamic Near East, 600–1600 CE

    University of Michigan · Fall 2012, as teaching assistant for Michael Bonner

  16. 2010–2011Religion · History

    Introduction to Islam

    University of Michigan · Spring 2011, Winter 2011 (as teaching assistant for Sherman Jackson), Spring 2010

  17. 2007–2010Language

    Elementary Modern Standard Arabic

    University of Michigan · 2007–2010

  18. 2006–2007Classical language

    Elementary Classical Arabic

    University of Michigan · 2006–2007

Workshops and Summer Schools Taught

  1. September 2025Switzerland

    Summer School on Digital Humanities for Islamic Studies

    University of Bern, September 1–4, 2025. Organizers: Tobias Hodel and Serena Tolino

  2. July 2025Germany

    From Classical ML to AI in Arabic and Islamic Studies: A Hands-On Workshop

    A 4-day workshop at the Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg, organized within EIS1600 with Tariq Yousef, Ryan Muther, and Alicia González Martínez

  3. September 2024Germany

    Introduction to Digital Humanities in Islamic Studies: A Hands-On Training

    A 1-day workshop at the Seminar für Arabistik/Islamwissenschaft, Universität Göttingen, with Jens Scheiner, September 25, 2024

  4. September 2024Spain

    Computational Analysis of Andalusian Prosopography

    A 5-day workshop on the Prosopografía de ulemas de al-Andalus (eea.csic.es/pua) at the Escuela de Estudios Árabes, Granada, with Mayte Penelas and Maribel Fierro, as part of the project Al-Andalus y el Magrib en el Oriente islámico: movilidad, migración y memoria (AMOI-II)

  5. December 2023Japan

    Intensive Workshop in Islamic Digital Humanities

    A 2-day workshop organized with Wakako Kumakura, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, December 16–17, 2023

  6. July 2018Belgium

    Digital Islamic Humanities: A 3-Day Intensive Course

    Ghent University, July 2–4, 2018, in collaboration with the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities. Plan and materials: dih-sms2018-ughent.github.io

  7. November 2017Netherlands

    Workshop on Digital Humanities in Islamic and Arabic Studies

    SENSIS ERC Project (PI Christian Lange), Utrecht University, November 30–December 1, 2017

  8. July 2016Germany

    From Text to Map

    A two-week intensive introduction (32 contact hours) to working with humanities data in digital mapping environments, co-taught with David J. Wrisley (American University of Beirut) at Culture & Technology, the European Summer University in Digital Humanities, Leipzig University

  9. February 2015USA

    Digital Humanities & Islamic Studies

    University of California, Los Angeles. Organized by Asma Sayeed and the Gustav E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies

  10. October 2014USA

    Textual Corpora and the Digital Islamic Humanities

    Brown University; session leader together with Elli Mylonas, organized by Elias Muhanna (details)

Supervision

  1. 2025–Ph.D.

    Hamid Reza Hakimi

    Patterns in the Financial History of the Islamic World (1–1000 AH / 600–1600 CE): Computational Analysis of Data from Chronicles

    Universität Hamburg, African and Asian Studies · main advisor

  2. 2022M.A.

    Lisa Mischer

    A Digital Humanities Approach to Biographical Dictionaries from the Arabic Written Tradition: Extraction and Enrichment of Historical Data

    Universität Leipzig, Digital Humanities · external advisor

  3. 2022B.A.

    M. Xenia Kudela

    Measuring Style: Stylometric Analysis of Collaborative Authorship between Ṭāhā Ḥusayn and Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm in “The Enchanted Castle” (al-Qaṣr al-masḥūr)

    Freie Universität Berlin, Arabic Studies · external advisor

  4. 2022Ph.D.

    Masoumeh Seydi

    Geospatial Analysis and Modeling of Textual Descriptions of Pre-modern Geography

    Universität Leipzig, Computer Science / Digital Humanities · external advisor

  5. 2015B.A. Honors

    Cameron Jackson

    An Interactive Map of the Classical Islamic World

    Tufts University, Computer Science and Arabic Studies