Alpha, Aleph, and AI: Languages of the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East
Arts Complex, 7 Woodland Road, University of Bristol, BS8 1TB
Conference
Registration free: via Eventbrite (in person and/or online attendance possible).
Programme
Wednesday 14 June 2023 (Day 1)
Registration from 8:00 until 9:00 AM: our registration table will be set up in the Breakout Space (enter via 7 Woodland Road Bristol, BS8 1TB)
With coffee & tea available in Breakout Space
Panel 1: 9:00-10:30 AM (20 min talk +10 min Q&A each)
Arts Complex B.H05 Lecture Theatre (enter via 7 Woodland Road)
• Aaron Koller (Yeshiva) “Alphabetical Order and Alphabetical Thinking from Antiquity to the Middle Ages: The History of an Idea and the Paths of Transmission”
• Luís Firmino (São Paulo) “The Article with Proper Names in Herodotus and Thucydides”
• Matthew Robinson (Oxford) “Programming at the Edge of Poetry: a computerised approach to Latin acrostics”
Coffee/tea break 10:30-11:00AM in Breakout Space
Panel 2: 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM (20 min talk + 10 min Q&A each)
Arts Complex B.H05 Lecture Theatre
• Keynote: Mark Depauw (KU Leuven) “Trismegistos: Facilitating (Quantitative) Research across Languages of the Ancient Western World” (Zoom)
• Maroula Salemenou (Oxford) “Negotiating Linguistic Norms in Sappho and Alcaeus: Some Examples from the Graeco-Roman Period in Papyri”
• Fiona Phillips (Oxford) “A Quantitative Approach to Carian-Greek Language Contact”
Panel 3: 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM (20 min talk + 10 min Q&A each)
Arts Complex B.H05 Lecture Theatre
• Keynote: Mark Depauw (KU Leuven) “Trismegistos: facilitating (quantitative) research across languages of the Ancient Western World” (zoom)
• Maroula Salemenou (Oxford) “Negotiating linguistic norms in Sappho and Alcaeus: some examples from the Graeco-Roman period in papyri”
• Fiona Phillips (Oxford) “A Quantitative Approach to Carian-Greek Language Contact”
Lunch break 12:30-1:15PM (there will be a catered sandwich lunch for speakers only, in HUMS Research space)
Panel 4: 1:15-3:30 PM (20 min talk + 10 min Q&A each)
Arts Complex B.H05 Lecture Theatre
• Keynote: Willem Van Peursen (Vrije Univ. Amsterdam) “Back to the Black Box? Explainable and Unexplainable AI in Semitic Studies”
• Todd Krause (Univ. Texas Austin) “Semitilex: One database to rule them all”
15 min break 2:15-2:30PM
• Matthew I. Swindall (Middle Tenn. State) “A.I.-Assisted Papyrology: Integrating Deep Learning into the Scholarly Workflow”
• Keynote: Marja Vierros (Helsinki) “Digging linguistic data from Greek documentary papyri – Experiences and experiments”
Coffee/tea break 3:30-4:00 in Breakout Space
Panel 5: 4:00-6:45 PM (20 min talk + 10 min Q&A each)
Arts Complex B.H05 Lecture Theatre
• Riccardo Bongiovanni (Pisa) “Tools for a new digital edition of the Corpus of Iatromagical Papyri”
• David Wilson (SOAS) “The enriching role of bilingualism in Mesopotamian incantations”
15-min break 5:00-5:15PM
• Ivri J. Bunis (Haifa) “Parallel Morphophonemic Consequences of Guttural Weakening in Hebrew and Western Neo-Aramaic”
• Tsehay Ademe Belay (Addis Ababa) “Comparative Semitics philological inquire based on the Ethiopic Book of Joel”
• Eva María Rodrigo Gómez (HUJI) “Greeks Findings in Syriac Texts: an example in Emmanuel bar Shahhare”
Dinner reservation for speakers (booked in advance at a local Bristol restaurant): 7:00PM
Thursday 15 June 2023 (Day 2)
Coffee and tea with pastries from 8:00 to 9:00 AM, available to all registered attendees and speakers (HUMS Research space, enter via 7 Woodland Road and follow signs)
Panel 7: 9:00-10:30 AM (20 min talk + 10 min Q&A each)
HUMS Research space (enter via 7 Woodland Road and follow signs)
• Minqi Chu (Sorbonne) “Editing, translation, and commentary on a glossary of anatomy in the Italo-Greek manuscript Paris. gr. 1053”
• Orly Lewis and Premshay Hermon (HUJI) “Re-animating Greco-Roman Anatomy through Machine Learning and 3D Modelling”
• Nikos Manousakis (Academy of Athens) “Applying (automated) Authorship Attribution to Greek drama: An expanding variety of case studies” (zoom)
Coffee/tea break 10:30-11:00AM in HUMS Research space
Panel 8: 11:00 AM-1:00 PM (20 min talk + 10 min Q&A each)
HUMS Research space
• Jonas Schollmeyer (Leipzig) “Towards a History of Hiatus in Greek Prose”
• Toby Hudson (Oxford) “Using acoustic simulations to model stress shift in Latin”
• Alessia Pezzella (Innsbruck) “Latin Technical Legal Terminology in Greek: Examples from Egyptian Papyrus Documents”
• Lorenzo Livorsi (Bamburg) “Law and Cursor: Digital Analysis of Prose Rhythm and Textual Criticism in the Late Roman Constitutions” (Zoom)
Lunch break: 1:00-2:00 (there will be a catered sandwich lunch for speakers only, in HUMS Research space)
Panel 9: 2:00-3:00PM (20 min talk + 10 min Q&A each)
HUMS Research space
• Keynote: Stefan Hagel (Austrian Acad. Sciences) “Digitally Editing Ancient Music” (zoom)
• Robert Crellin (Cambridge) “How important is text type in training models for morphosyntactic annotation of epigraphic texts?”
• Maria Konstantinidou (Democritus Univ. Thrace) “A preliminary authorship analysis of the New Testament”
Coffee/tea break 3:30-4:00PM in HUMS Research space
Panel 10: AI-themed Roundtable Panel and Concluding Remarks
HUMS Research Space
• 4:00-5:15PM – AI-themed roundtable panel (student and early career respondents)
• 5:15-5:30PM – Concluding Remarks
Departure 5:30PM
PDF containing all abstracts:PDF - AAI conference abstracts (PDF, 132kB)
PDF of the Programme:PDF - AAI conference programme (PDF, 121kB)
Contact information
Organisers: Lindsey Davidson (formerly Askin), Benjamin Folit-Weinberg, Martina Delucchi, and Maiken Mosleth King.
Email: conf2023alphaalephai@gmail.com.