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UID:019e45f2-34e8-75d1-97ae-c84c859cccca@www.dariah.eu
DTSTAMP:20260520T151241Z
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251107
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20251108
SUMMARY:Friday Frontiers Webinar on Retrieving Context\, Re-centering Inter
 pretation: AI Hermeneutics and the Democratization of Reading
DESCRIPTION:Friday 7th November 2025\, 10.30 WET / 11.30 CET / 12.30 EET\n\
 nTitle: Retrieving Context\, Re-centering Interpretation: AI Hermeneutics 
 and the Democratization of Reading\n\nSpeaker: Prof. Jenny Kwok\, Hong Kon
 g Baptist University\n\nRegistration details: https://dariah.zoom.us/meet
 ing/register/BvhAgdWHTh2eA0xODMpVnQ \n\nAbstract\n\nIn digital humanities
 \, retrieval technologies have always mediated how we read\, from concorda
 nces to search engines. With the advent of large language model and retrie
 val-augmented generation (RAG) which was made available by the former\, in
 terpretation itself becomes procedural: machines now arguably perform a ve
 rsion of the critic’s movement between evidence and hypothesis\, invitin
 g debates and questions on the way (literary) reading might have been chan
 ged or even challenged. This talk introduces AI hermeneutics\, an approach
  that treats RAG not as automation but as interpretive infrastructure\, op
 ening up an opportunity to integrate AI into the existing reading experien
 ce.\n\nDrawing on experiments with the Conflict Archive on the Internet an
 d conflict-era poetry\, the  project explores how retrieval systems can s
 urface overlooked cultural memory while foregrounding the ethical boundari
 es of machine reading. It demonstrates how model “(mis-)readings” reve
 al the biases and expectations embedded in both human and computational in
 terpretation.\n\nThe talk also considers questions of accessibility and su
 stainability— how lighter\, discipline-specific models and transparent d
 ocumentation can democratize advanced AI methods for scholars without exte
 nsive computing resources and its challenges. By reframing retrieval as a 
 human-machine dialogue\, AI hermeneutics invites the digital humanities c
 ommunity to see algorithmic mediation not as a threat to interpretation bu
 t as an opportunity to make the labor of reading visible and rewarded agai
 n.\n\nAbout the speaker\n\nProf. Kwok is Assistant Professor at the Academ
 y of Language and Culture\, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences\, Hong Kon
 g Baptist University (HKBU). She was awarded a CDH Visiting Fellowship at 
 the University of Cambridge (2025) and will be a Gale Digital Scholar at t
 he University of Oxford\, 2026.\n\nPrior to joining HKBU\, she was Postdoc
 toral Fellow and later Research Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts
 \, University of Hong Kong (HKU)\, where she also served as Lab Coordinato
 r of the Arts Technology Lab. At HKU and HKBU\, she contributed to the dev
 elopment of Digital Humanities teaching programs\, including Introduction 
 to digital humanities theories\, tools\, and methodologies\, and advanced 
 computational literary studies.\n\nHer research explores how large languag
 e models can augment humanities inquiry\, focusing on the intersection of 
 AI and creative interpretation. She works on the application of Retrieval-
 Augmented Generation (RAG) for contextualized reading of Irish Troubles po
 etry and on the design of AI workflows and agent-based systems for literar
 y analysis. Her broader interests include creativity\, generative AI\, and
  the epistemic challenges posed by computational methods in the humanities
 . She has been invited to speak and deliver keynotes internationally\, con
 tributing perspectives on how computational advancements both challenge an
 d renew humanistic practice. She also currently serves as a reviewer for s
 everal journals\, including AI & Society and the Journal of Cultural Anal
 ytics\, and as guest editor for the ongoing Journal of Open Humanities Dat
 a special collection on benchmarking in digital humanities.
LOCATION:Online
URL:https://www.dariah.eu/events/friday-frontiers-webinar-on-retrieving-con
 text-re-centering-interpretation-ai-hermeneutics-and-the-democratization-o
 f-reading
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