On April 21st at 12:30 pm (CEST), we are pleased to host the third session of the CrossAsia DH Lunchtalks 2026. The talk will be given by Dr. Beibei Zhan and is titled “Reimagining Humanities Education: Interdisciplinary Cultivation in the Era of Digital Intelligence.” Dr. Zhan will share her experience developing a structured pedagogical approach for integrating AI and digital methods into humanities teaching in the era of “Digital Intelligence.”

In the „Digital Intelligence“ era, the rapid evolution of AI and Big Data is fundamentally reshaping the production and dissemination of knowledge, necessitating a transition in humanities education from traditional paradigms to an integrated, technology-enhanced ecosystem. This lecture proposes a transformative framework for cultivating humanities students under the „New Liberal Arts“ initiative, aiming to bridge the gap between classical erudition and computational science through a Six-Dimensional Structural Model. This model integrates problem-solving, knowledge synthesis, tool literacy, task practice, organizational collaboration, and ethical governance into a cohesive strategy, driving research through authentic socio-cultural inquiries while balancing technical proficiency with rigorous responsibility.

Central to this pedagogical shift are the practical innovations at Yuelu Academy (Hunan University), specifically the „Digital Intelligence Micro-course Cluster“ and the „Humanities-AI Seminar“. The Micro-course Cluster operates on a three-tiered conceptual framework: first, establishing General Digital Literacy to foster computational thinking and a critical understanding of AI tools; second, developing Discipline-Specific Core Reflection, where students utilize digital methods such as metadata encoding and text mining to innovate traditional tasks like version tracing and semantic analysis; and third, encouraging Interdisciplinary Frontier Exploration, which empowers students to lead original research in cutting-edge fields such as Linguistic Intelligence, Cultural Visualization, and Digital Geography (GIS). Complementing this structured approach, the Humanities-AI Seminar offers a self-organized, „Human-in-the-loop“ community where students, experts, and industry engineers co-create knowledge through real-world case studies, such as utilizing OpenAI APIs for structured knowledge extraction from historical archives. By synthesizing systematic training with open-ended collaborative research, these models demonstrate how humanities students can evolve into versatile scholars capable of navigating and shaping the global digital landscape.

About the speaker:

Dr. Beibei Zhan is an Associate Professor and Director of the Digital Humanities Center at Yuelu Academy, Hunan University, holding dual doctorates in Computer Vision (Kingston University) and Sinology (SOAS University of London). Her research focuses on the intersection of Ming-Qing history, Digital Humanities and Humanistic Intelligence. She currently serves as an Executive Member of the Technical Committee on Computing Applications, China Computer Federation (CCF), and as a Council Representative of the Digital Humanities Development Alliance of China.

The lecture will be held in English. If you have any questions, please contact us at ostasienabt@sbb.spk-berlin.de.

The lecture will be streamed and recorded via Webex*. You can take part in the lecture using your browser without having to install a special software. Please click on the respective button “To the lecture” below, follow the link “join via browser,” and enter your name.

You can find the full programm of CrossAsia DH Lunchtalks 2026 here. Further talks will also be announced on our blog as well as on Mastodon and BlueSky.