People

Javier Cha is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong and has been active in the digital humanities community since 2008. Before moving to Hong Kong in 2022, he was a founding member of the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities and taught at the interdisciplinary College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University. He has also held guest positions as Visiting Professor in Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence at the CNRS in Paris and as Digital Historian-in-Residence at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Originally trained as an intellectual historian of Confucianism, Javier’s eclectic research profile includes annotated translations of classical Chinese essays, the integration of graph database technology in historical scholarship, and experimental humanities projects that address the challenges posed by big data and artificial intelligence. He has been awarded more than USD $1.3 million in grants and fellowships from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, the Academy of Korean Studies, the Korea Foundation, Seoul National University, the University of Hong Kong, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Donghyeok Choi is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong, where he explores the social and institutional dynamics of premodern Korea using computational methods. His current work draws on prosopographical datasets and statistical modeling to trace the career trajectories, lifespans, and professional networks of early modern Korean officials. Always keen to expand the historian’s toolkit, Donghyeok integrates large language models into his research to accelerate data processing, enrich interpretations, and push the boundaries of historical methodology.

Dr. Eric H. C. Chow is an independent consultant with a focus on applying artificial intelligence and large language models in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector across Asia and North America. He currently works part-time as a digital specialist at the Asia Art Archive. Formerly the Digital Scholarship Manager at Hong Kong Baptist University Library, Eric has long been engaged in developing digital archives and tools that bridge cultural heritage and computational research.

Yan Hon Michael Chung is an incoming Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He specializes in the formation of the Hanjun Eight Banners during the Qing dynasty. Chung is also an active researcher in digital humanities, with expertise in optical text recognition and text mining for classical Chinese and Manchu sources.

Yumeng Hou is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Performance Studies at the National University of Singapore with a background in computer science and industry experience in analytics and cloud technology. Her research interests sit at the intersection of computation, visualization, digital curation, and cultural archives. Her projects aim to use technology to enhance the representation, transmission, and transformation of traditional practices and performances and various forms of intangible cultural heritage.

Juyeon Kim is the founder and CEO of Pickgeul, a platform that offers targeted, personalized support for emerging storytellers and digital content creators. At BDSL, she contributed research on the philosophy of time, caching technologies, real-time computing, and the network society.

Nabanita Dash is a machine learning engineer based in Hyderabad, India. Her research interests include photogrammetry, digital forensics, and differential privacy. At BDSL, she contributed research on mobile forensics and Android app decompilers.

Robin Na is a PhD student in Information Technology at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He was previously a predoctoral fellow at the Laboratory for Social Minds at Carnegie Mellon University. Robin is a physicist who is particularly fascinated by complex systems and social data. He lent his expertise in network science to the Big Data Studies Lab.

Eugene Jang is a Ph.D. candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include big data surveillance, data doubles, and digital contact tracing. During her stay at the Big Data Studies Lab, Eugene designed and led a research project on Covid-19 contact tracing using newspaper data from the United States, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.