DHI Talks & Projects Showcased at Library Digital Scholarship Roadshow 2026
Since spring 2022, the Division of Humanities and the HKUST Library have partnered to run the Digital Humanities Initiative (DHI), uniting faculty, library staff, and students to learn digital methods and develop humanities-focused digital projects. In spring 2024, the Library launched DS CoLab, a collaborative co-learning program for students and the Library’s Digital Scholarship team to explore digital tools and methods to tackle various challenges.
From March 16 – 20, Library presented a digital scholarship roadshow highlighting how our community is experimenting with digital technologies to support research, enhance learning, and explore new forms of storytelling at HKUST.
DHI Talks
The DHI Talks – “A Taste of Digital Scholarship” – featured four HUMA faculty presenting their digital humanities projects:
- Prof. Giulio Ongaro – Akha Voices in One Script: A Project of Digitalization and Standardization of Oral Texts.
- Prof. Tobias Benedikt Zürn – Visualizing the Huainanzi’s Intertextuality: A Hyperlinked Approach.
- Dr. Marco Caboara – Mapping Tartary: A Digital Exploration of European Cartography.
- Prof. Jianxiong Ma – Digital Humanities Study on the Bazi Basin Society in Southwest China and Highland Southeast Asia.
More than 60 attended the talks, generating strong interest and lively intellectual exchange between faculty and students. Participants praised the “great organization” and described it as “fascinating to learn about these projects.”
DS Roadshow – Poster Exhibition
Throughout the week, the poster exhibition showcased a selection of projects from DHI and DS CoLab – a snapshot of the questions being asked, the methods being tested, and the different ways digital tools are being used.
The projects showcased are:
- HK1997
- Sha Fei and Wartime Photography
- A Study of “Zheng He’s Voyages to the Western Sea” 《三寶太監西洋記》
- Digitalizing LEE Yonggang’s Diaries: Preserving History and Cultural Connections
- Temperature Heatmap on Library Floor Plan
- English and Chinese Topic Modeling Tool
- Chinese Named-Entity Recognition (NER) Tool
- Tales from a 1493 World Map: Playing with Augmented Reality (AR)
DS Roadshow – VR & AR Activities
Each day, visitors had the chance to join VR and AR hands-on sessions. These helped participants connect the posters and project narratives with lived experience – seeing how immersive technologies can support exploration, interpretation, and creative forms of scholarship. The activities attracted over 970 visits. Staff and students enjoyed – often staying to discuss what they had tried. Many left with a clearer understanding of how the Library and Humanities faculty collaborate, and what kinds of outputs and learning opportunities these partnerships can produce.
The VR project showcased is “Digital Storytelling with VR: Visual Conservation of Kowloon City’s Heritage”.
For AR and Face Tracking project please see “Tales from a 1493 World Map: Playing with Augmented Reality (AR)”.
Text: Gary Wong (Library), originally published at Library’s Newsletter Notes from the Library – Issue No. 140 April 2026.
Photography: Eunice Wong (Library), Gary Wong (Library), and Yifan Wang (Library).
Layout & Design: Yifan Wang (Library).
