Topic: It’s All About Mapping in Digital Humanities

Date: November 10th, 2015

Time: 14:00 – 17:00

Place: 350316, Research & Innovation-Incubation Center, National Chechchi University, Taipei

Format: Presentations and Roundtable Discussion

Featuring: Christian Ketels

Participating Discussants: David Blundell, Andy Jan, Ching-chih Lin, Daya (Da-wei) Kuan, Hsiung-ming Liao

ApSTi Website: http://apsti.nccu.edu.tw/

Featured Participant:

Christian Ketels, a member of the Harvard Business School faculty at Professor Michael E. Porter’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. He holds a Ph.D. (Econ) from the London School of Economics and further degrees from the Kiel Institute for World Economics and Cologne University. He is President of TCI, a global network of professionals in the field of competitiveness, clusters, and innovation, Honorary Professor at the European Business School Oestrich-Winckel, and Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm School of Economics. In 2009 he served as a Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore. Dr Ketels has led cluster and competitiveness projects in many parts of the world, has written widely on economic policy issues, and is a frequent speaker on competitiveness and strategy in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Participating Discussants:

David Blundell, doctorate in Anthropology from the University of California based on the life histories of Buddhist practitioners making their own ethnographic films in Sri Lanka. Prof Blundell is Director of the Asia-Pacific SpatioTemporal Institute (ApSTi), Top University Project in Digital Humanities, Research & Innovation-Incubation Center, National Chengchi University, Taipei. His publications concern belief systems, visual anthropology, aesthetic anthropology, Austronesia, language and culture, geographic information systems (GIS) mapping, Asia-Pacific as a cultural area.

Andy Jan, geo-spatial software engineer who is also specializing in forestry resource management, geographic information systems. Currently Associate Professor in the Department of Land Economics, and Co-Director of the Asia-Pacific SpatioTemporal Institute (ApSTi), Top University Project in Digital Humanities, Research & Innovation-Incubation Center, National Chengchi University, Taipei. Dr Jan has established digital systems to analyze global environments, and has developed Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) as strategies for local community data collection.

Ching-chih Lin, Ph.D. in History at UC Berkeley, is Assistant Professor in the Graduate Institute of Religious Studies, and Secretary of Asia-Pacific SpatioTemporal Institute (ApSTi), Top University Project in Digital Humanities, Research & Innovation-Incubation Center, National Chengchi University, Taipei. His research interests include Chinese popular religion, historical anthropology, oral history, cultural and environmental history, and digital humanities. He recently utilizes several research tools and methods of digital humanities (i.e., GIS and social network analysis) in the study of Chinese popular religion in China and Taiwan. Prof Lin is also constructing a GIS platform for the study of Chinese woodblock prints (muban nianhua 木版年畫).

Daya (Da-wei) Kuan, Associate Professor of the Department of Ethnology, National Chengchi University. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography from University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is a research member of ApSTi with interests including development geography, cultural geography, and indigenous geography.

Hsiung-ming Liao, Assistant Research Scientist of the Center for GIS, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei. He is a research member of ApSTi with interests including cartography, GIS, remote sensing, GPS, digital archives, and digital humanities.

ApSTi Orientation: Geographic information and timelines provide an effective integrating and contextualizing function for cultural attributes. As cross walks for information from multiple sources and in multiple formats they create visual indexes for diverse cultural data. Spatiotemporal interfaces provide new methods of integrating primary source materials into web-based interactive and 3D visualizations. We are able to chart the extent of specific traits of cultural information via maps using GIS gazetteer style spreadsheets for collecting and curating datasets. The system is based on GIS point locations, routes, and regions linked to enriched attribute information. These are charted and visualized in dynamic maps and can be analyzed with network analysis, creating an innovative digital infrastructure for scholarly collaboration and creation of customizable visualizations. This method gives the researchers an expanse of data in layers of time across space providing new tools to advance humanistic inquiry. This in turn becomes a Web-based bulletin board for local community and scholarly knowledge exchange.

Group projects are linked together for the synergies of mutual concerns in regional Spatial Humanities. These include:

Religious Networks
Historical Migrations
Recognition of Signs, Symbols, and Motifs
Use of Old Maps
Historical Spatiotemporal Indexing of Sites
Comparing Physical Artifacts
Multilingual and Historical Textual Information
Genealogies
Attributes and Features Analysis
Cluster Mapping Techniques

Curriculum Vitae Phone: +(886) 988-010-089

e-mail: janettan.liu@gmail.com

I am an entrepreneur in both business and research. My earlier education background provides me with knowledge to focus on technology and business development. My latest education training provides me with research ability to analyze political and economic phenomenon with prior working experience, and therefore, I qualify myself as a multi-disciplinary researcher. Recently, I have initiated Taiwan Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at National Chengchi University (NCCU) working closely with my colleagues and Michael Porter’s team at Harvard Business School (HBS) on Taiwan’s competitiveness. The collaborative effort is to generate critical analyses for Taiwan’s industries and policy makers.

Education Background:

2016 May 31, PhD in International Political Economy, National Chengchi University, International Program of Asia Pacific Studies

2015 Winter, Completed Microeconomic of Competitiveness (MOC) course learning cluster mapping framework from the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness (ISC), HBS

2011 Fall & Spring, U.C. Berkeley, visiting scholar, focus on dissertation research on Taiwan’s Economic Identity under the guidance of Dr. T.J. Pempel and the Dean of Political Science, Dr. Taoku Lee.

2009 Spring, U.C. Berkeley, visiting scholar, focus on Asia Pacific Regionalism

2008 – Present, PhD Candidate, International Doctoral Program of Asia Pacific Studies (IDAS) at NCCU Taipei, Taiwan; GPA: 90/100

1991 June 15, MS in Engineering Management, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California

1984 December 21, BS in Mathematics and Computer Science, San Jose State University, San Jose, California

Honorary Appointments:

2013 December – appointed by Dr. Porter to work on Taiwan’s Social Progress Index project & Taiwan’s Competitiveness

2001 – 2004: Technology Advisor for Xiangtan University Industrial Park appointed by the Mayor of Xiangtan, Hunan, China

1994 – 1998: US Northern California Export Council, direct appointment by the US Secretary of Commerce.

Key Publications:

2012, “Fledgling Democracy in Taiwan: Need of a Civil Rights Protection System”, ed. David Blundell, Taiwan since Martial Law, Taiwan University and UC Berkeley Press 1997 April 8, a technology patent, US Patent Number: 5,619,708 “System and method for generating database input forms”, a documentation methodology with scan technology and database organization. Over the years, the patent has had 77 references and citations from various enterprises including IBM, Microsoft, Sun Micro System, and Nuance. The patent was assigned to KorTeam International and sold to Nuance Inc.

Experience:

2014 – present Member of Michael Porter’s research team on Taiwan’s Competitiveness

2012 – 2013 – Entrepreneurship Advisor, NCCU

2012 – 2014 – adjunct Lecturer at Jienkuo Technology University, Chunghwa, Taiwan

2011 – 2012 – Entrepreneur Advisor, Chairman of Harvard Survey Technology Inc., Taichung

2008 – 2011 – International Political Economy researcher, specialize in industrial analysis and Asia Pacific regionalism.

1981 – 2008 – Silicon Valley Entrepreneur, specialize in Speech Recognition and system integration.