NEW YORK — Historian Khatchig Mouradian and his teammates are among the recipients of a Schmidt Sciences grant to bring AI to humanities research.
The project, “Connectivity and Individuality in Textual Traditions: Reimagining Scalable and Evidence-Based Approaches for Inclusive and Transformative Humanities Computing,” is led by a team of principal investigators: Peter Bol (Harvard University), Kianté Brantley (Harvard University), Yehuda Halper (Bar Ilan University), Unso Jo (Cornell University), Khatchig Mouradian (Columbia University), Sebastian Nehrdich (Tohoku University) and Donald Sturgeon (Durham University).
Schmidt Sciences has awarded $11 million for up to 23 teams of researchers around the world to develop and apply artificial intelligence to archaeology, history, literature and other humanities disciplines, seeking to unlock new understandings of human history and culture.
“Our newest technologies may shed light on our oldest truths, on all that makes us human — from the origins of civilization to the peaks of philosophical thought to contemporary art and film,” said Wendy Schmidt, co-founder of Schmidt Sciences. “Schmidt Sciences’ Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) is poised to change not only the course of scholarship, but also the way we see ourselves and our role in the world.”
Humanities scholars have a hard time using AI models because those models are trained on massive amounts of contemporary data, modern languages and two-dimensional media, whereas humanities research often involves ancient or lesser-spoken languages, three-dimensional artifacts, art made from a variety of materials and relatively small amounts of ambiguous and culture-specific information. The Schmidt Sciences’s HAVI program will support researchers to create new AI models or evolve existing ones to open new avenues for historical understanding and inquiry.
Researchers will, for example, create AI models that can answer questions from the perspective of a particular historical place and time, analyze how camera movement and soundtracks shape narrative in film, explore how changes in trade routes or technology affect art and literature, search for new, buried archaeological sites and even virtually unwind ancient scrolls or read illegible, torn, shorthand manuscripts. Their work will range across geographies and millennia, from industrial England to Qing-era China to ancient Egypt.
“Rather than destroying the humanities, as many have feared, AI has a role in advancing the humanities, opening new avenues of scholarship,” said Brent Seales, a University of Kentucky professor who leads HAVI. “Computational methods have been a part of the study of humanities for decades, and it’s time to explore how to integrate AI into this essential scholarship.”
The teams were selected after multiple rounds of review by Schmidt Sciences and external experts. They join two inaugural awards from HAVI granted earlier this year — one to the Sorbonne University in Paris to study the artworks of Eugene Delacroix and a second to EduceLab, a first-of-its-kind, next-gen heritage science user facility that applies AI, micro-CT imaging and other high-tech instrumentation to the study of cultural heritage artifacts.
On December 11, Schmidt Sciences also announced the next round of this program, with an application due date of March 13, 2026.
Learn more about the winners here.
