A new open-access article by Hui Lin and Dr Rafal Zaborowski, both from the Department of Digital Humanities at KCL, examines how the Chinese platform Douyin (internationally known as TikTok) gamifies everyday social interaction.
This study explores features like flame badges and virtual pets that turn friendship into a visible, measurable activity where keeping a streak or co-parenting a digital companion become proxies for intimacy. Using a mixed-method approach combining walkthrough analysis with an innovative video diary-interview method, Lin and Zaborowski show how Doyin’s playful features may strengthen bonds within small, close-knit groups while also commodifying social relationships. The platform masks manipulative dynamics of data extraction and commodification with a framework of sociality and entertainment. Users mitigate undesirable algorithmic outcomes by actively managing their interactions, revealing a tension between connection and control.
This project contributes to ongoing work in DDH on platform governance, algorithmic sociality, and critical digital methods, and opens new conversations on play and intimacy on short-form video platforms.
We invite submissions for the conference Quantitative Diachronic Linguistics and Cultural Analytics: Data-Driven Insights into Language and Cultural Change, to be held at King’s College London (Strand Campus, WC2R 2LS) on 15–16 January 2026. This is an in-person event.
Language is in constant flux, shaped by social, cultural, and cognitive forces over time. With the increasing availability of large-scale textual data and computational tools, researchers are now better equipped than ever to uncover patterns and mechanisms of language change. This two-day conference explores the intersection of quantitative diachronic linguistics and cultural analytics, providing a platform for researchers working with computational and data-driven methods to investigate how language evolves and how these changes relate – directly or broadly – to cultural dynamics. We welcome contributions that engage with any aspect of historical linguistics and diachronic language analysis, provided they incorporate quantitative approaches and offer insights into the interplay between linguistic and cultural change.
Confirmed keynote speakers are Dr Barbara McGillivray (King’s College London) and Prof Erich Round(University of Surrey), who will offer complementary perspectives on quantitative methods on different languages.
Submission Guidelines
We invite submissions for 20-minute presentations, followed by 10 minutes of discussion.
Abstracts should be a maximum of 400 words (excluding references) and must include the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s).
Please submit your abstract as a .docx file via email to: quantitative.diachronic.ling@gmail.com. Use the following subject line: “ABSTRACT Quantitative Diachronic Linguistics”
Deadline: 25 September 2025, 23:59 BST
Suggested Topics (non-exhaustive list)
Submissions may include (but are not limited to) the following areas, with no restrictions on language(s) or historical periods:
Quantitative studies of language change across time
Corpus-based analyses of language evolution
Computational modelling of diachronic syntax, semantics, morphology, etc.
Cross-linguistic comparisons using large-scale data
Language change in connection with historical, literary, or cultural trends
Digital methods for exploring linguistic and cultural shifts
Applications of cultural analytics to linguistic data
Important Dates
25 September 2025: Abstract Submission Deadline
31 October 2025: Notification of Acceptance (after peer review)
15–16 January 2026: Conference Dates
For any inquiries, please contact the organisers, Andrea Farina (andrea.farina@kcl.ac.uk) or Caitlin Wilson (caitlin.e.wilson@kcl.ac.uk).
To register for this event, please follow this link.
Andrew Gilbert (University of Surrey), DANTE-AD: Dual-Vision Attention Network for Long-Term Audio Description
Abstract
Audio Description is a narrated commentary designed to aid vision-impaired audiences in perceiving key visual elements in a video. While short-form video understanding has advanced rapidly, a solution for maintaining coherent long-term visual storytelling remains unresolved. I’ll introduce existing methods that rely solely on frame-level embeddings, effectively describing object-based content but lacking contextual information across scenes. Then, I’ll introduce DANTE-AD, an enhanced video description model leveraging a dual-vision Transformer-based architecture to address this gap. DANTE-AD sequentially fuses both frame and scene-level embeddings to improve long-term contextual understanding. I’ll explore the evaluation of the approach on a broad range of key scenes from well-known movie clips, across traditional NLP metrics and LLM-based evaluations. Finally, I’ll look at where the field of AI-assisted audio description is heading.
About the speaker
Andrew Gilbert is an Associate Professor in Machine Learning at the University of Surrey, where he co-leads the Centre for Creative Arts and Technologies (C-CATS). His research lies at the intersection of computer vision, generative modelling, and multimodal learning, with a particular focus on building interpretable and human-centred AI systems. His work aims to develop machines that see and recognise the world and understand and creatively respond to it. Dr. Gilbert has made significant contributions to the fields of video understanding, long-form video captioning, visual image style modelling, and AI-driven story understanding. A distinctive feature of his research is its integration into the creative industries, applying technical advances to domains such as media production, performance capture, and digital arts. This includes training models to classify genres from movie trailers and designing systems that can generate synthetic images and narrative content.
DDH’s Prof. Btihaj Ajana publishes a chapter in Italian language in the volume, “Incorporazioni: Prospettive storiche e teoriche”, edited by Angela Michelis and Francesco Pisano. The volume focuses on the multifaceted concept of the body, examining its role in shaping identity and subjectivity through a historical and conceptual lens.
Jenny Kwok (University of Hong Kong), Ambiguity and Archive: Computational Hermeneutics of Conflict Poetry through RAG
Abstract
This presentation proposes a methodological bridge between computational literary studies and conflict historiography through AI-augmented archival analysis. Focusing on Northern Ireland’s Troubles poetry, the study leverages the Conflict and Politics in Northern Ireland Archive (CAIN) to construct a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework that dynamically contextualizes poetic ambiguity within historical narratives.
The framework reconciles the scalability of AI with humanities rigor by integrating close reading practices, machine-assisted contextualization, and archival metadata. It establishes a replicable model for analyzing contested histories while prioritizing political sensitivity through localized AI training, demonstrating how resource-limited institutions can conduct computationally intensive scholarship without dependence on proprietary systems.
A comparative analysis of humanistic and computational methods reveals that hybrid approaches—where archival grounding tempers machine learning outputs—reduce historical projection biases in sentiment analysis. This proves critical when interpreting poetic devices encoding sectarian dualism (e.g., metaphorized territoriality in Seamus Heaney’s work). The study further critiques the temporality of AI-archival integration, arguing that dynamic context-retrieval systems avoid flattening historical nuance compared to static training corpora.
The presentation concludes by proposing toolkits that enable scholars to employ for other conflict literatures, emphasizing adjustable parameters for geopolitical specificity. By decentralizing AI infrastructure and foregrounding archival multiplicity, this work advances interdisciplinary debates about computational criticism’s capacity to engage ethically with traumatic histories.
Bio
Dr. Jenny Kwok is Research Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Arts, University of Hong Kong, where she also serves as the Lab Coordinator of the Arts Technology Lab. Dr. Kwok’s research advances AI workflows for literary analysis, focusing on Irish conflict literature. She develops retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems to contextualize the ambiguity of Troubles-era poetry within historical archives, and fine-tunes LLMs for semantic analysis of Irish literary corpuses. Her methods prioritize sociopolitical sensitivity and literary nuances, countering AI’s tendency to flatten contested narratives.
Her forthcoming work proposes frameworks for democratizing AI in the humanities, emphasizing explainable AI (XAI) tools. This aligns with her reinterpretation of pre-digital methodologies (e.g., Josephine Miles’ concordance work) as blueprints for hybrid human-machine interpretation.
Dr. Kwok holds fellowship at the Cambridge Digital Humanities (2024-2025) and is Gale Scholar Asia Pacific, Digital Humanities Oxford (2026).
We are excited to invite you to the Work-in-Progress Symposium for Postgraduate Researchers in Digital Humanities, where PhD Students will share the progress of their research and engage with their peers through constructive feedback and discussions.
This symposium is an excellent opportunity for students to present their research thus far, exchange ideas, and receive valuable insights from the academic community. Whether you are presenting or attending, your participation will contribute to a lively and supportive atmosphere.
If you are a PGR student in Digital Humanities at King’s College London and would like to present, please submit a brief abstract of your work (max 250 words, with your title, name and email address) to isaac.1.parkinson@kcl.ac.uk by 18 April 2025.
On 31 March 2025, King’s College London hosted Crossing Boundaries: Celebrating Linguistic Diversity at King’s, a unique and vibrant event that brought together students from across the university to explore how languages shape our understanding of motion, space, and the world around us. This interdisciplinary initiative, funded by a Diversity & Inclusion Grant (£787.59) from the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, was organised by Andrea Farina and Dr Barbara McGillivray (King’s College London), with artistic direction by Gioele Morello (London Metropolitan University).
Set against the multicultural backdrop of London – a city where hundreds of languages are spoken, many at risk of disappearing – Crossing Boundaries aimed to raise awareness of the importance of linguistic diversity and inclusivity in academic and everyday contexts. The event drew together students from across faculties and departments, from Digital Humanities to Languages, Literatures and Cultures, in a dynamic, collaborative exploration of how different languages encode movement and spatial relationships.
Language, Motion, and Meaning
At the heart of the event was a compelling linguistic inquiry: how do different languages express motion through space? Participants examined and compared motion verbs in a wide array of ancient and modern languages, including English, Italian, Albanian, Chinese, Korean, and Latin. Through these comparisons, students uncovered fascinating insights into the cultural frameworks and cognitive patterns that underpin different linguistic systems.
With the help of Andrea Farina, attendees were able to explore how languages vary in their treatment of direction, path, and manner. For example, while English tends to express direction through dedicated verbs like enter/exit or go in/out, other languages use verb morphology or compound expressions to convey similar meanings. These nuanced differences provided a powerful lens through which to examine how language influences thought and perception.
Collaborative Creation: The Paths of Motion Installation
Beyond linguistic analysis, the event also invited students to engage creatively. A major highlight of the day was the collaborative development of Paths of Motion, a participatory art installation that visually represents the diversity of linguistic approaches to describing movement. Co-designed and co-created by participants under the guidance of Gioele Morello, the artwork served as a tangible expression of the day’s themes and a collective celebration of the languages spoken within the King’s community.
The installation, centred around the theme of an air balloon symbolising fluidity and travel, captured the unique ways people conceptualise motion and direction across languages. Participants actively contributed to the creation of Paths of Motion by adding words and phrases describing movement in their native and learned languages, which were woven into the artwork to reflect the diversity of linguistic structures used to express motion. They also shared personal reflections and thoughts, written on yellow sticky notes that form the basket of an air balloon, grounding the piece in lived experience and collective exploration.
A Shared Commitment to Inclusion
More than just an academic exercise, Crossing Boundaries underscored King’s ongoing commitment to inclusivity and cultural awareness. By foregrounding the voices and linguistic backgrounds of students, the event created space for meaningful exchange and reflection. Participants were invited to contribute their native languages and personal experiences to the discussion, ensuring a truly representative and inclusive environment.
The event also highlighted the value of student-led contributions to research and creative practice. Through their engagement, students played a vital role in promoting and preserving linguistic diversity, not only within the university, but in broader society.
Deception Analysis with Artificial Intelligence: An interdisciplinary perspective – Stefan Sarkadi (King’s College London)
Information Control and Disinformation in East Africa: An Analysis of Digital Dynamics in Burundi – Steve Karake (Decent Work for All Burundi)
Thick Fakes: Malinformation and the Future of Information Warfare – Hossein Derakshan (King’s College London)
10:45 am -11:15 am Coffee break
11:15 am -12:45 pmPanel 2: State Controls
Algorithmic Governance and Postcoloniality: A Case Study of AI Traffic Enforcement Systems in Kerala, India – Ashwin Varghese (University of Cambridge)
Information Controls in Sub-Saharan Africa: Digital Repression, State Censorship, and Resistance Strategies – Kehinde Adegboyega (Human Rights Journalists Network Nigeria)
State-Controlled Typewriter Ownership: On The Poetry of The Unwritten – Mattia Natale (King’s College London)
12:45 pm – 1:45 pm Lunch
1:45 pm – 3:15 pmPanel 3: Infrastructures
Russian Internet Infrastructure in the Age of Digital Sovereignty and Infrastructural Coercion: The case of TSPU – Dmitry Kuznetsov (University of Amsterdam)
Societal Foundations of Cryptography – Martin R. Albrecht (King’s College London) and Rikke Bjerg Jensen (Royal Holloway University of London)
Examining Organised Breakdowns of the Internet as a Means of Information Controls – Gowhar Farooq (King’s College London)
3:15 pm – 3:45 pm Coffee break
3:45 pm – 4:45 pmCivil society roundtable discussion on information controls
A conversation with:
Esra’a Al Shafei
Esra’a Al Shafei is the founding director of Majal, a network of online platforms that amplify under-reported and marginalized voices in West Asia and North Africa. She is also the co-founder of the Numun Fund, which resources and sustains women-led groups who engage with technology in their activism in the Global Majority. Most recently, she’s the founder of Surveillance Watch, an interactive map and database that exposes the hidden connections within the opaque surveillance industry. Esra’a currently serves on the Board of Trustees at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit which hosts Wikipedia. She is also on the Board of the Tor Project, developers of one of the world’s strongest tools for privacy and freedom online, and Mastodon, a free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services.
Savena Surana
Savena Surana (she/her) is a creative producer, strategist, and artist dedicated to telling impactful stories. As the co-founder of Identity 2.0, a creative studio envisioning better digital futures, she transforms research into engaging narratives about our relationship with technology. She has worked with organizations like the Mastercard Foundation, the Westminster Forum of Democracy, and Careful Trouble, and serves as the program manager for Grand Plan, a micro-grants charity. Savena’s interdisciplinary efforts span exhibitions, printed zines, workshops, and digital experiences, collaborating with groups such as Stop Killer Robots and Feminist Internet and sharing her expertise globally, including at the University of Oxford and the World Web Foundation.
Michaela Nakayama Shapiro
Michaela is the Programme Officer for Censorship at ARTICLE 19 where she works to ensure that people can exercise their rights to speak and know using Internet infrastructure that is purposefully designed and deployed to enable the free flow of information. In this role, Michaela works to improve the censorship resilience of telecommunication networks and the domain name system (DNS) through engaging in the development of anti-censorship standards and protocols at technical standards-setting forums, building and participating in civil society coalitions and information-sharing networks, and carrying out strategic communications and research outputs for the Censorship Programme.
Prior to joining A19, she served as the Advocacy & Engagement Officer at Global Partners Digital, leading civil society engagement efforts in global multilateral and multistakeholder forums and processes at the intersection of internet governance and human rights. She previously worked at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and in the New York City Mayor’s office. She holds an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in History from Northwestern University.
We are pleased to announce that our PhD student Andrea Farina has been awarded the ‘Initiative of the Year’ prize by the Faculty of Arts & Humanities for his workshop Data Driven Classics: Exploring the Power of Shared Datasets (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/data-driven-classics-exploring-the-power-of-shared-datasets), which took place at King’s College London on 5 July 2024.
Date: May 16, 2025 Location: King’s College, London Submission Deadline: March 31, 2025
The Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College, London and the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP) invite submissions for a one-day symposium exploring the intersections of digital technologies and power, by examining contemporary issues involving information controls. This symposium aims to build connections by fostering critical conversations between scholars and practitioners working on information controls.
We welcome abstracts of 300 words (max) addressing the following themes:
Understudied Geographies of Information Controls
Methodological and Theoretical Approaches to Studying Information Controls
Discussions may include, but are not limited to:
The social, political, and economic conditions that enable information controls
The roles of different actors in perpetuating, supporting, or resisting information controls
Contemporary theoretical and methodological approaches to studying information control mechanisms
Experiences of practitioners and scholars conducting fieldwork in contexts of censorship, misinformation, and digital surveillance
This symposium will be of interest to upcoming and established scholars working on censorship, mis/disinformation, digital infrastructures, and other related areas.
Submission Guidelines
Abstracts should be around 300 words (excluding references)
