Tag Archives: digital humanities

MIT Student Employment Opportunity: Digital Interfaces Assistant for A3-Archnet Collaboration

A3: Archives of African Architectures and the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT are seeking a student worker to assist the A3-Archnet Collaborative for the Documentation of African Architecture with the development of a seamless flow of information between the a3africa.org and archnet.org platforms. The work will include the tasks listed below, but to the extent possible, tasks assigned will reflect the skills and interests of the successful applicant. Write the programming code that allows seamless information being pulled from a3africa.org onto Archnet.org and vice-versa Design a search-optimized, mobile-friendly web interface Test, identify, and resolve any technical problems arising from […]

Student Employment Opportunity: Research Assistant for Mapping Cultural Networks Project-Extended

The Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC@MIT) and Project Cornelia at the University of Leuven (Department of Art History), Belgium, have been awarded a MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Global Seed Fund grant to explore spatial and temporal mapping of networks of cultural influence among the creators of visual and material culture (artists, architects, and the like), as well as the subsequent ‘life’ of the works they create. How can we “map” or otherwise visually represent relationships of collaboration, influence, and patronage across time and space? How can Digital Humanities tools help us to follow the fate […]

Archnet To Be Featured at Upcoming SHASS Digital Collaborative Session

On February 25, 2021, the AKDC will present “Archnet 3.0: Enhancing Archnet for Teaching in the Digital Humanities” as part of the SHASS Digital Teaching and Research Collaborative Sessions at MIT. SHASS Digital Teaching and Research Collaborative Sessions take place each Thursday from 4:30-5:30 during the term. What is “Archnet 3.0”? AKDC@MIT and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture are currently in the process of re-developing Archnet, a freely accessible resource focused on the built environment in societies influenced by Muslim culture. Archnet’s mission is to provide ready access to unique textual and media material to facilitate teaching, scholarship, and […]

AKDC Staff participating in panel on Digital Humanities + Islamic Visual Culture in the annual conference of the College Art Association

Matt Saba, AKDC Visual Resources Librarian, a and Glaire Anderson, Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art at the University of Edinburgh, have organized and will chair a panel on Digital Humanities + Islamic Visual Culture for the 109th Annual Conference of the College Art Association to be held online February 10-13, 2021. The panel is sponsored by the Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA). The panel includes 4 presentations: “Soft Eyes: Software’s Visualities and Islamic Art History in the Digital Age” by Hussein Keshani, The University of British Columbia “Animating an Amulet: 3D Modeling, Materiality, and a Medieval Arabic Amulet Scroll” […]

Content added to Archnet in 2020

2020 has been an unusually difficult year around the world, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As universities took courses online, Archnet.org, a joint project of the Aga Khan Documentation Center of the MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT) and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) worked with our partners step up the pace through which we made available quality resources for studying Islamic architecture and the built environment of Muslim societies more broadly. Approximately 3,350 new records have been published on Archnet so far this year. In addition to making over 2,700 new images available for download, we have also published records […]

MIT Libraries now accepting applications for AKDC Program Head

The following announcement has just been posted by the MIT Libraries: The role of Program Head for AKDC is a critical leadership position responsible for stewarding and developing collections, services, and programs to support the information needs of the faculty, students and researchers of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) in MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. It also provides oversight of Archnet in partnership with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and engages in other innovative collection development within the Department of Distinctive Collections in the MIT Libraries. Primary responsibilities: Leads and develops long-range planning for […]

6 Days to the Application Deadline for Nigerian Students Seeking to Join the A3/Archnet Team

February 28th is the deadline for students in Nigerian to submit applications to join A3/Archives of African Architecture and the Aga Khan Documentation Center of the MIT Libraries in a project to document the architecture of Nigeria, particularly endangered architectural heritage, and contemporary projects. Both undergraduate and graduate students are invited to compete for the prize. Recipients will join the A3 – Archnet team on a fully-funded weeklong trip to Boston, Massachusetts where they will receive training in the documentation of architectural heritage, and participate with the A3-Archnet team as they plan and begin development of the database. To apply for the […]

AKDC’s LayerCake mapping tool now available to the public

The Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT), is pleased to announce the public release of LayerCake, an interactive tool for mapping data points across time and space. The LayerCake project was initiated by Sharon C. Smith, Ph.D., Head of Distinctive Collections at Arizona State University, and former AKDC@MIT Program Head, who served as the PI for the project. Interim AKDC Program Head, Michael Toler, Ph.D. now serves as the project PI. Working with designer and programmer, James Yamada (MDes, Harvard GSD, 2014), the tool is currently under development at AKDC@MIT. As a 3-axes mapping tool, LayerCake enables users to […]

AKDC and Project Cornelia receive grant to develop LayerCake

The Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT and Project Cornelia at the University of Leuven are pleased to announce that they have been rewarded a MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Global Seed Fund grant for workshops in both Leuven and Cambridge to study networks of cultural influence among artists, followed by a symposium and the deployment of student-created artist network maps. The studies will use linked open data sets and a version of LayerCake – a web app that maps narratives and collections of objects across geographic space and time – modified to show network relationships between points […]

Full House for AKDC presentation at HIAA biannual symposium

AKDC@MIT is delighted to have had the opportunity to present on its collections and new research tools to a packed room at the 2018 biennial symposium of the Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA). The session took place at 1:00 pm on Saturday, October 27, the final day of the symposium at Yale University. Matt Saba, Visual Resources Librarian, gave a brief overview of the history of the center and its image collection, the Aga Khan Visual Archive. He then surveyed several of the center’s new collections since 2012, divided into three categories. For Scholars’ Collections he highlighted the Tabbaa […]