Digital Malabar: Perspectives and Methods in Islamicate Humanities from the Global South

Malabar, located along the southwestern coast of the Indian subcontinent, occupies a distinctive position in the history of the Indian Ocean world. For more than a millennium, it has been a confluence of trade, mobility, and intellectual exchange linking the Asian, Arab, Persian, and European worlds. The Islamicate heritage of Malabar expressed through its extensive institutions and other historical materials constitutes an invaluable repository of transregional social, cultural, and intellectual history.

The rapid emergence of digital humanities and digital preservation practices in recent decades offers new avenues for scholars to engage with historical materials. Digitization not only safeguards fragile textual and oral sources from physical deterioration but also transforms the epistemological landscape of howsuch archives are studied, interpreted, and circulated. Within this global turn towards the digital heritage, the initiative Digital Malabar seeks to situate the preservation and further study of Malabar’s Islamicate intellectual history within the digital humanities frameworks.

Held on the eve of World Digital Preservation Day, this three-day symposium will convene scholars, archivists, and technology experts from across the world to explore new perspectives and methodologies in Islamicate Humanities. Through presentations, case studies, and collaborative discussions, the program discusses challenges, opportunities, and the future of digital preservation and research in the Global South. It aims to foreground both the global relevance and the local rootedness of the efforts towards digital preservation and digital research in the region.

Objectives

• Introduce Islamicate Digital Humanities and its relevance
• Explain methods of digital preservation for manuscripts and archives in the Global South
• Demonstrate digital tools for analyzing textual and archival data
• Highlight important digital resources in the Islamicate world
• Explore the future of Digital Humanities in the Global South

Mode: Online

Deadline: 7 November 2025, 12.00 PM IST

Contact: rbml@malaibar.org

Speakers

• Columba Stewart (Executive Director, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library)
• Josh Mugler (Associate Cataloger for Arabic and Syriac manuscripts, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, U.S.A)
• Lorenz Nigst (Assistant Professor, Centre for Digital Humanities, AKU-ISMC, Manager of the KITAB corpus)
• Mathew Barber (Centre for Digital Humanities, AKU-ISMC, U.K)
• Masoumeh Seydi (Digital Lead, KITAB)
• Shiju Alex (Director & Chief Archivist, Indic Digital Archive Foundation)
• Noorudheen Mustafa (Executive Director, Malaibar Foundation for Research and Development, India)
• Muhammed Khaleel (Head of South India Collections, Malaibar Foundation for Research and Development, India)

Event Schedule

Day 1 – Monday

4.30 PM - 6.30 PM IST / 6.00 AM - 8.00 AM ET / 11.00 - 1.00 GMT/UTC

• Digital Preservation and Digital Humanities: Introduction to Digital Malabar – Noorudheen Mustafa
• Textual Analysis in Islamic Studies: The KITAB Project – Lorenz Nigst, Mathew Barber, and Masoumeh Seydi

Day 2 – Tuesday

7.30 PM - 9.30 PM IST / 10.00 AM - 11.00 PM ET / 3.00 - 1.00 GMT/UTC

• Digital Preservation Around the World – Columba Stewart and Josh Mugler

Day 3 – Wednesday

5.00 PM - 7.00 PM IST / 6.30 PM - 8.30 AM ET / 11.30 AM - 1.30 PM GMT/UTC

• Towards the Idea of Digital Malabar – Muhammed Khaleel (Malaibar Foundation for Research and Development, India) and Shiju Alex (Grandhappura, Indic Digital Archive Foundation)

Vote of thanks: Noorudheen Mustafa (Malaibar Foundation for Research and Development, India)

Partners

• Center for Digital Humanities, AKU-ISMC
• Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, USA
• KITAB - Knowledge, Information Technology, and the Arabic Book (ERC Grant Awardee, 2020, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation)