People

Shih-Pei Chen

Senior Research Scholar
PhD
SCHEN@MPIWG-BERLIN.MPG.DE T +49 30 22667-153
Room B22/272
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Shih-Pei Chen is a digital humanities specialist with a focus on digital historical research and Digital Sinology. She is a computer scientist by training and has been working with historians to develop digital research applications and methodologies for more than fifteen years. She is currently Senior Research Scholar and IT Researcher at the Institute, and is leading projects that range from research-oriented digital tool development (Local Gazetteers Research Tools; LoGaRT), geospatial and visual analysis (CHMap), to technical research infrastructure development (RISE & SHINE) and new forms of publishing historical datasets (Digital Concordances). She also serves on various editorial, advisory, and reviewing boards for journals, conferences, research projects, and funding agencies in the field of Digital Humanities.

 

 

Current Projects

scan of page from the chapter of heavenly patters (tianwen)
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Common Knowledge and Its Sources in the Sinosphere
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"May" in Bin Feng Guangyi 豳风广义, 3 Juan 卷 found in the HathiTrust Digital Library collection
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Daily Practices of Cosmological Knowledge in Late Imperial China (1368–1911)
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EduTrack logo in front of white background
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EduTrack
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Source-Based Initiatives
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Completed Projects

Scan of two facing pages showing circular astrology diagram.
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Fenye in Local Gazetteers
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Local Gazetteers
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LoGaRT
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Mapping Drugs
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Drugs in Asia
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Rare Local Gazetteers Collection
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Research Infrastructure for the Study of Eurasia (RISE)
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Digital Tools
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The WebGIS Platform of Historical Maps of China
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A Chinese Map of the Xing An Region, included in the Japanese "translation" of the reclamation report by the Chinese military. Yutaka Kurimoto, Kōan tonkonku jijō (Dairen: Minami Manshū Tetsudō Kabushiki Kaisha, 1929).
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“Tu” in Local Gazetteers
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Selected Publications

Che, Qun, Shih-Pei Chen, Nung-yao Lin, and Calvin Yeh (2026). “Link Visions Together: Visualizing Geographies of Late Qing and Republican China.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, March 27, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqag015.

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Chen, Shih-Pei (2025). “What One Should Know About a Locality: Analyzing Knowledge Categories in the Chinese Local Gazetteers.”. In Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue, ed. M. Cooley and H. Wu, 121–152. Ann Arbor,…

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Tsai, Yun-Cheng and Shih-Pei Chen (2024). “Bridging Literature and Code: Empowering Students to Explore Digital Humanities Through Generative AI.”. In Innovative Technologies and Learning: 7th International Conference, ICITL 2024, Tartu, Estonia,…

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Chen, Shih-Pei (2024). “Fenye by the Numbers: A Quantitative Analysis of Astrological Contents in Chinese Local Gazetteers.” HoST — Journal of History of Science and Technology 18 (1): 6–30. https://doi.org/10.2478/host-2024-0002.

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Media

Podcast
03: "LoGaRT: History 4.0" with Shih-Pei Chen and Joe Dennis

Past Events

Talk

Crafting Luxury from the Sea: Shark Fin and the Making of Maritime Knowledge in Late Imperial China

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Talk

Book Launch: "Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue"

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Workshop

Common Knowledge in Historical East Asia and Beyond

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Digital Humanities Brown Bag Lunch

Exploring the Use of AI and Large Language Models at the Institute: A Roundtable

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Primary Source Reading Group

Primary Source Reading: Bonesetting between Tibetan Scholarly Medicine and Mongolian “Common Knowledge"

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Working Group

Primary Source Reading: Medical Manuscripts in the Unschuld Collection and Gestation-related Knowledge in Daily-use Encyclopadias

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Primary Source Reading Group

Primary Source Reading: Medical Sections in Chinese and Japanese Household Encyclopedias

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Primary Source Reading Group

Primary Source Reading: Medical Sections in Chinese and Japanese Household Encyclopedias

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Lecture

Sustainability in Translation and Transportation: German Forestry in Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945)

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Working Group

Digital Infrastructure and Data Collection

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Working Group

Digital Infrastructure and Data Collection

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Working Group

Classifying the Unseen: Curiosity, Fantasy, and Common Knowledge in Early Modern China

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Colloquium

Tracing the Source Material of the Heavens-Related Sections in Daily-Use Encyclopedias

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Workshop

Cosmology in a Living World: Knowledge Regarding Environment and Life in Late Imperial China

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Talk

Practicing Learning from Heaven as a Form of Life: The Case of Liu Ning 劉凝

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Talk

The Ecology of the Political Landscape in Eleventh-Century Shaanxi: The Environmental and Spatial History of a Multiethnic Borderland

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Presentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities

Structures of Knowing an Empire: Building Digital Analytical Tools for Chinese Local Gazetteers and Spanish Relaciones Geográficas. Together with Mariana Favila Vázquez.

Online

CrossAsia DH Lunch
Treating a Genre as a Knowledge System: Analysing Chinese Local Gazetteers and Daily-Use Encyclopedias with Quantitative Approaches

Department of Chinese Studies, University of Tübingen

Digital Sinology: Studying Chinese History through Digital Humanities Workshop
What One Should Know about a Locality: Analyzing Chinese Local Gazetteers with LoGaRT

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris

Archives and Local Society in China Seminar
Adapting Object Detection Foundation Models for History of Science Data. Together with Sarah Lang and Calvin Yeh.

BIFOLD

AI-Based Methods for the Humanities
  • Digital Humanities