We chat to librarian and digital wizard Nicole Merkel-Hilf about her many digital projects in the spaces of online archives, publishing, and the use of digital tools to improve access to increase the development of digital collections.

Nicole wears many hats and is involved with many digital projects. She is the subject librarian for Modern South Asian languages and the History and Art of South Asia at the Library of the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies. She is also the coordinator for FID4SA (Fachinformationsdienst Südasien = Specialised information service South Asia) at Heidelberg University Library and South Asia Institute. She is the project lead for Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing (HASP) and the

The ANUBhasha Podcast's 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia' series is supported by an Asia-Pacific Innovative Project grant from the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

Music from Epidemic Sound --
Song: 'Sultan of Delhi'
Album: Court of Akbar
Artist: Banaras Baba & Kolkata Kid
Year: 2019

This is part 2 of a 2 part conversation that the ANUBhasha team (Chris Diamond & Stephanie Majcher) have with Jason Neelis, Associate Professor of Religion & Culture at Wilfrid Laurier (Canada), Murtaza Taj, Assistant Professor and Faculty Director of the Computer Vision and Graphics Lab and Technology for People Initiative at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) (Pakistan), and Atiq Hashmi, technical project Manager for LUMS' Technology for the People Initiative (TPI) (Pakistan), We discuss the historical and contemporary pressures on heritage sites in Pakistan, mostly. Combing scholastic, heritage, and technological approaches our three guests discuss the race to image, document, and share the epigraphic and palaeographic sites in the Upper Indus Valley before much of the region is flooded in national works projects and the construction of a dam. In this half we focus on the linguistic diversity of the region and the challenges of putting technologists and academics on the same page to help present digital cultural heritage in an accessible and appealing way. 

Links to the digital preservation projects that our guests have contributed to: 

• Heritage360.pk (Digital Preservation of Pakistan's Heritage)
  • example site in the Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan
• Sketchfab site for LUMS Lab with around 1700 3D models

Links to publications: 

• Vol. 1 of Antiquities of Northern Pakistan (Heidelberg Akademie)
• German language volumes with catalogs of individual sites ('Felsbildstationen')
• Jason Neeli's open-access book Early Buddhist Transmission & Trade Networks (Chapter 5 on Upper Indus Capillary Networks)

Other links:

• A video on Rock Carvings and Inscriptions in Chilas along the Karakoram Highway by Maryam Shah (Jason Neelis' Masters student [Central European University])

The ANUBhasha Podcast's 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia' series is supported by an Asia-Pacific Innovative Project grant from the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

Music from Epidemic Sound --
Song: 'Sultan of Delhi'
Album: Court of Akbar
Artist: Banaras Baba & Kolkata Kid
Year: 2019

This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation that the ANUBhasha team (Chris Diamond & Stephanie Majcher) have with Jason Neelis, Associate Professor of Religion & Culture at Wilfrid Laurier (Canada), Murtaza Taj, Assistant Professor and Faculty Director of the Computer Vision and Graphics Lab and Technology for People Initiative at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) (Pakistan), and Atiq Hashmi, technical project Manager for LUMS' Technology for the People Initiative (TPI) (Pakistan).

We discuss the historical and contemporary pressures on heritage sites in Pakistan, mostly. Combing scholastic, heritage, and technological approaches our three guests discuss the race to image, document, and share the epigraphic and palaeographic sites in the Upper Indus Valley before much of the region is flooded in national works projects and the construction of a dam.

Links to the digital preservation projects that our guests have contributed to: 

• Heritage360.pk (Digital Preservation of Pakistan's Heritage)
  • example site in the Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan
• Sketchfab site for LUMS Lab with around 1700 3D models

Links to publications: 

• Vol. 1 of Antiquities of Northern Pakistan (Heidelberg Akademie)
• German language volumes with catalogs of individual sites ('Felsbildstationen')
• Jason Neeli's open-access book Early Buddhist Transmission & Trade Networks (Chapter 5 on Upper Indus Capillary Networks)

Other links:

• A video on Rock Carvings and Inscriptions in Chilas along the Karakoram Highway by Maryam Shah (Jason Neelis' Masters student [Central European University])

The ANUBhasha Podcast's 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia' series is supported by an Asia-Pacific Innovative Project grant from the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

Music from Epidemic Sound --
Song: 'Sultan of Delhi'
Album: Court of Akbar
Artist: Banaras Baba & Kolkata Kid
Year: 2019

In this conversation, we are joined by Prof. Ronit Ricci of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she  is the Sternberg-Tamir Chair in Comparative Cultures and Professor in the departments of Asian Studies and Comparative Religion. She also holds an appointment at the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University.

Ronit is a specialist in the textual worlds of Indonesia and the greater Malay world. She is currently the project head for an European Council of Research (ERC) funded project called: "Textual Microcosms: A New Approach in Translation Studies".

In this podcast episode, Ronit also reflects on a set of projects to digitise manuscripts of the Malay community in Sri Lanka under an 'Endangered Archives Programme' of the British Library. You can learn more about these projects and see some of the digitised manuscripts at the links below:

• Digitising Malay writing in Sri Lanka
• Manuscripts of the Sri Lankan Malays

The ANUBhasha Podcast's 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia' series is supported by an Asia-Pacific Innovative Project grant from the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

Music from Epidemic Sound --
Song: 'Sultan of Delhi'
Album: Court of Akbar
Artist: Banaras Baba & Kolkata Kid
Year: 2019

In this episode, we hold a cross-Pacific conversation with our colleagues Joe Marino in Seattle (WA, USA) and Mike Skinner in Hilo (Hawai'i) about their work on Gandharan Buddhist manuscript sources from Pakistan/Afghanistan and Kushana inscriptions in India, respectively. We talk about the historical and contemporary Buddhist and regional heritage communities that direct our research and increasingly highlight the need for equitable and accessible digital platforms to bridge the divide between 'scholars' and 'non-scholars'.

Dr. Joseph A. Marino, III is an Assistant Professor of Sanskrit and Buddhist Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington in Seattle (USA).

Dr. Michael Skinner is a Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Hawaii-Hilo (USA). 

The ANUBhasha Podcast's 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia' series is supported by an Asia-Pacific Innovative Project grant from the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

Music from Epidemic Sound --
Song: 'Sultan of Delhi'
Album: Court of Akbar
Artist: Banaras Baba & Kolkata Kid
Year: 2019

In the first episode of ANUBhasha's 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia Series', Steph and Chris chat with Dr. Adrian Plau, the Manuscript Collections Information Analyst at Wellcome Collection in London (UK). He is currently undertaking a Headley Fellowship with the Art Fund (UK). 

Adrian talks to us about his own work transitioning from the traditional practices of textual scholarship in South Asian Studies from a university environment to the GLAM and collections space where he asks us to consider why and for whom we do our work.

Links to Adrian's technical and archival work -- 

• Wellcome & TEI ('Text Coding Initiative')
• Wellcome & Provenance
• 'Stories of Asian Palm-leaf Manuscripts'

The ANUBhasha Podcast's 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia' series is supported by an Asia-Pacific Innovative Project grant from the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

Music from Epidemic Sound --
Song: 'Sultan of Delhi'
Album: Court of Akbar
Artist: Banaras Baba & Kolkata Kid
Year: 2019

The ANUBhasha team, Dr. Chris Diamond and Dr. Stephanie Majcher, introduce the new 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia' podcast series for 2023.

For more details on the 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia' series, please visit: https://anubhasha.org/feature/podcast/

For more general information about ANUBhasha, included some of its ongoing work on digital texts and community engagement, visit www.anubhasha.org

Chris and Steph are both lecturers in the School of Culture, History, and Language (CHL) in the College of Asia and the Pacific (CAP) at The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia. The 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia' project is supported by an Asia-Pacific Innovative Project grant from CHL. 

At the outset of this project, we acknowledge and honour the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people on whose country this podcast was produced and which was never ceded. This is Aboriginal land - always ways, always will be. 

The ANUBhasha Podcast's 'Digital Repatriation in South Asia' series is supported by an Asia-Pacific Innovative Project grant from the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

Music from Epidemic Sound --
Song: 'Sultan of Delhi'
Album: Court of Akbar
Artist: Banaras Baba & Kolkata Kid
Year: 2019