Khatchig Mouradian (Lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies) has been selected as a Schmidt Sciences 2025 Humanities and AI Virtual Institute awardee.

He will serve as a co-Principal Investigator in the project “Connectivity and Individuality in Textual Traditions: Reimagining Scalable and Evidence-Based Approaches for Inclusive and Transformative Humanities Computing,” which brings together an international team of historians and AI experts.  The project aims to experiment with AI’s ability to perform research and derive novel insights within the Humanities:

Researchers will, for example, create AI models that can answer questions from the perspective of a particular historical place and time, analyze how camera movement and soundtracks shape narrative in film, explore how changes in trade routes or technology affect art and literature, search for new, buried archaeological sites and even virtually unwind ancient scrolls or read illegible, torn, shorthand manuscripts. Their work will range across geographies and millennia, from industrial England to Qing-era China to ancient Egypt.