InqDialog

The Inquiry-Orientated Dialogues project, based at the University of Freiburg, investigates dialogue-based forms of knowledge transfer between approximately 1150 and 1650 CE. It analyzes a largely unexplored body of texts using methods from data science and cultural studies to shed new light on discourses in and about premodern intellectual culture.

My contribution to this four-year project begins with leading a team of research assistants in digitizing print editions and medieval manuscripts. We use open-source technology (specifically eScriptorium for text recognition), and I use Kraken to fine-tune text-recognition models for the demands of our medieval texts. I am also developing a portfolio of natural language processing tools to analyze the project’s corpus of texts. The foundation uses a BERT-style transformer to train part of speech analysis and sentence boundary detection for the Middle High German language. Customized tools to segment scenes and recogize speech, though, and writing representation (STWR) will build on those foundational tools, as will newly developed measurements of semantic and syntactic open-endedness.