VolkswagenStiftung grant: Islam's 'Peripheries': Digital Humanities, Algorithmic Analysis, and AI in West Africa and Central Asia

I would like to express my gratitude to the VolkswagenStiftung for supporting my research for the second time this year. As part of the "Open Up – New Research Spaces for the Humanities and Cultural Studies" programme, this grant funds a new collaboration with my colleague, Aksana Ismailbekova: "Islam's 'Peripheries': Digital Humanities, Algorithmic Analysis and AI in West Africa and Central Asia".

Our work will centre on two unique, multilingual collections housed at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO). The first is the Islam West Africa Collection, an open-access repository containing over 14,500 newspapers, Islamic publications, and audio-visual recordings from six West African countries. The second is the Reinhard Eisener Collection, which documents colonial and early Soviet governance in Central Asia.

These digital collections contain thousands of documents written in a variety of languages, including Arabic, Hausa, French, Russian and Tajik. While they are rich in detail, their sheer quantity and linguistic diversity make traditional comparative analysis almost impossible. To bridge these regions, we are moving beyond "traditional" methods and simple keyword searches.

We will experiment with using AI to overcome the fragmentation of the collections. Processing these documents computationally allows us to move beyond isolated case studies and compare Islamic discourses in West Africa and Central Asia, regardless of the original language. The goal is to transform static scans into a dynamic system that reveals connections between actors and concepts that would otherwise remain hidden.

Crucially, we will prioritise open-source AI models. The resulting tools must be accessible to all, not just those in institutional environments with significant resources. We want these workflows accessible to researchers in West Africa and Central Asia, not just to those of us in Germany.

The project will conclude with a workshop for scholars and archivists from both regions. We intend to leave behind usable digital workflows that serve the communities we study, rather than simply extracting data for publication.