Digital Forays Workshop Series

How do digital data gathering capabilities change what we can know, prove, and remember? Researchers and activists working with open-source data, satellite imagery, and citizen documentation explore evidence-building in the age of disinformation.

At a moment when Americans are glued to TikToks, Tweets, live streams, and social media posts capturing unfolding events, this session examines how these digital records are being saved, aggregated, cross-referenced, processed by computer vision, and preserved as evidence.

Critical mapping as practice that presents maps against dominant power structures. Scholars, practitioners, and activists discuss digital spatial practices that disrupt narratives and illustrate collaborative, counter-, and alter-mapping initiatives across the region.

How do scholars and activists use infographics, data visualizations, and novel digital storytelling techniques to explore lived experience and flip imaginations of space and place?

A roundtable examining the present conditions and future (5 to 10 years) of digital scholarly research on, in, and from the Middle East, including collaboration infrastructure, institutional acceptance, and the perils and promise of funding.

Through an open call, PhD/MA candidates, junior faculty, and independent scholars presented developing digital projects that push the norms, boundaries, and forms of Middle Eastern scholarship through new tools, methods, and modes of dissemination.