Date: 13 November 2023 (Mon)
Time: 5 pm (HK time)
On Zoom
Language: English

Please click here to register

Speaker:
Ms. Jing Hu
Research Librarian in the East Asia Department
Berlin State Library

About the talk:

The complex tributary relations between the Qing and Chosŏn dynasties did more than define their political affiliations; they also shaped intricate economic networks. Drawing from the Korean envoys’ travelogues, Yŏnhaengnok, this lecture explores the unofficial trade activities undertaken by Chosŏn interpreters during tribute missions to Qing China. Utilizing digital platforms like MARKUS and DocuSky, the research maps out who these interpreters traded with, what commodities were involved, and the geographic locations of these transactions.

This lecture aims to introduce to the methodology of text mining and historical network analysis. The approach of the example research involves the sophisticated use of entity extraction, ontology creation for network building, and relational annotation to visualize networks and GIS data. Attendees will gain insight into the utility of these methods in historical research based on East Asian texts.

About the speaker:

Jing Hu is a social historian specializing in Chosŏn Korea and a digital humanities specialist. She is currently a Research Librarian in the East Asia department at the Berlin State Library. She earned her MA degree in Cultural Informatics from the Academy of Korean Studies in 2014. Between 2014 and 2016, she worked as a researcher at Renmin University of China. Subsequently, she has pursued her PhD at Leiden University (2016-2022) and KU Leuven (2022-present). During her doctoral journey, she contributed to development projects such as the Korean text annotation platform K-MARKUS (https://dh.chinese-empires.eu/markus/) and the text comparison platform ZGZY Parallels (https://dh.chinese-empires.eu/zgzy/?ed=MOD&ch=1&psg=).