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Aga Khan Documentation Center
Aga Khan Documentation Center

Tag Archives: digital humanities

Founding Program Head Leaving AKDC

This week Sharon C. Smith, PhD, founding Program Head of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC@MIT), and co-director of Archnet.org, will turn over the reins to Michael A. Toler, PhD, Archnet Content Manager, who will assume the role of Interim Program Head. Smith established AKDC@MIT in 2011 when she came to MIT from the Harvard University’s Fine Arts Library. Since then the Center has not only provided outstanding support to the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT and Harvard, but it has grown into a research and archival center with a significant and growing global reputation. […]

Roads, Routes and Networks: Projects for the Visualization of Art Historical Information

Digital Humanities Colloquium Harvard University, RCC Conference Room, 26 Trowbridge St., Cambridge MA Space and movement have always been fundamental for art history, through concepts such as -among others- center and periphery, roads for global exchange, or the experience of travel. Geographical Information Systems are transforming the traditional ways to visualize these disciplinary discourses about dissemination, innovation and evolution. Network analysis is bringing to light people and places, usually overlooked by public attention focused on a few big names, that otherwise had been very relevant in their own time as nodes for exchange or partnership. Vast and quickly increasing amounts […]

Aga Khan Documentation Center at BRISMES 2017

For the second year in a row, AKDC@MIT was well represented at the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRIMSES) annual meeting. This year’s conference, Movement and Migration in the Middle East: People and Ideas in Flux, was held at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, July 5-7, 2017. Under the larger conference theme, AKDC Program Head Sharon C. Smith and Archnet Content Manager Michael Toler co-organized “Chronicles and Curation: Documenting Cultural Transitions in the Wider Middle East (in 2 parts)” spanning two sessions; both panels chaired by Smith. Panel 1A contained papers examining challenges in archiving personal collections in Yemen, an oral history project […]

AKDC Program Head interviewed by architecture student group at the University of Tehran: Lessons on building a documentation center

Sharon C. Smith, Ph.D., was recently interviewed by the Iran Architecture Studies Student Community of the University of Tehran, Iran, on the topic of establishing a documentation center. As the founding head of the current Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, Smith was asked to address some fundamental issues and provide insight for the students as they seek to set up a digital archive of Iranian architecture at the University of Tehran. The students stated that they found the interview informational, stating that “your words about the necessity of collaboration changed our approach to making our data center.” (Email correspondence, […]

AKDC@MIT Program Head at the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations

Sharon C. Smith, Ph.D., spoke at the Media in Muslim Contexts: Inventing and Reinventing Identities conference sponsored by the Aga Khan University (International), in the United Kingdom, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations, 3-4 November 2016. There, she presented her paper “The Past Demands an Answer: What Becomes of History in the Digital Era?” exploring the opportunities, constraints, intentions, and consequences–planned and not–of the production, presentation, and dissemination of digital projects about and/or from the Middle East writ large. The conference was simulcasted with campuses in Nairobi and Karachi.