Javier Cha
Biographic Data
| ID | 3959823 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Javier Cha |
| GIVEN NAMES | Javier |
| FAMILY NAME | Cha |
| SIGNATURE | CHA J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4900-2923 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 6 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Fine-Tuning the Historian's Macroscope
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.This article explores the development and application of a historian’s macroscope, a computational framework that enables multiscalar exploration of medieval Korean biographical records using Neo4j. While digitization has greatly expanded access to historical sources, existing methodologies struggle to integrate large, heterogeneous datasets while maintaining interpreti…
Automating the Past
Based on my opening keynote at DH2025, this article examines the impact that transformer-based machine learning brings to the interpretive work of historians. The discussion begins by revisiting an earlier phase of my research, which focused on digitally mediated, multiscale analysis – or what I refer to as ‘digital (re)reading’ – using database queries to detect structural patterns in digitized historical sources. Building on this foundation, I …
Boundless Winds of Empire
Sixiang Wang’s Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Chosŏn Diplomacy with Ming China is an extraordinary feat that reshapes our understanding of Korea’s diplomatic history and its connections and parallels to the wider currents of empire-building in East Asia and beyond. This intellectual tour de force immerses readers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a transformative period in Korean history whose significance reverbe…
The Forking Paths of Digital Humanities in Asian Studies
This article responds to the “Digital Humanities in/and Asian Studies” forum, situating it within broader genealogies of Asian digital humanities and arguing for a multilayered approach to understanding its histories, networks, and organizations. We offer two complementary trajectories: first, tracing the historical intersections of Asian studies and computing—from early initiatives such as the Munkwa Project and the China Biographical Database t…
Snakes or Ladders? Measuring the Intergenerational Performance of Chosŏn’s Munkwa Exam Candidates
This interdisciplinary study measures the changes in intergenerational exam performance using a model of directed centrality values. Our test case explores the approximately 14,600 higher civil examination degree holders in the Munkwa database (Munkwa pangmok 文科榜目), in particular the underutilized records of each candidate’s agnatic and affinal relations. Despite some imperfections in the data set, our provisional findings statistically demonstra…
Digital / Humanities
This article outlines the background to the divide between ‘the digital’ and ‘the humanities’ in contemporary South Korea. Since the late 1990s, the government of South Korea has made concerted efforts to digitize information, resulting in increased access to an unusually high quantity of heritage sources. However, the massive investments in the building of online resources have not inspired a ‘digital turn’ in the mainstream of South Korea’s dep…
No prominent works on this page.
Digital / Humanities
This article outlines the background to the divide between ‘the digital’ and ‘the humanities’ in contemporary South Korea. Since the late 1990s, the government of South Korea has made concerted efforts to digitize information, resulting in increased access to an unusually high quantity of heritage sources. However, the massive investments in the building of online resources have not inspired a ‘digital turn’ in the mainstream of South Korea’s dep…
Snakes or Ladders? Measuring the Intergenerational Performance of Chosŏn’s Munkwa Exam Candidates
This interdisciplinary study measures the changes in intergenerational exam performance using a model of directed centrality values. Our test case explores the approximately 14,600 higher civil examination degree holders in the Munkwa database (Munkwa pangmok 文科榜目), in particular the underutilized records of each candidate’s agnatic and affinal relations. Despite some imperfections in the data set, our provisional findings statistically demonstra…
Boundless Winds of Empire
Sixiang Wang’s Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Chosŏn Diplomacy with Ming China is an extraordinary feat that reshapes our understanding of Korea’s diplomatic history and its connections and parallels to the wider currents of empire-building in East Asia and beyond. This intellectual tour de force immerses readers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a transformative period in Korean history whose significance reverbe…
The Forking Paths of Digital Humanities in Asian Studies
This article responds to the “Digital Humanities in/and Asian Studies” forum, situating it within broader genealogies of Asian digital humanities and arguing for a multilayered approach to understanding its histories, networks, and organizations. We offer two complementary trajectories: first, tracing the historical intersections of Asian studies and computing—from early initiatives such as the Munkwa Project and the China Biographical Database t…
Fine-Tuning the Historian's Macroscope
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.This article explores the development and application of a historian’s macroscope, a computational framework that enables multiscalar exploration of medieval Korean biographical records using Neo4j. While digitization has greatly expanded access to historical sources, existing methodologies struggle to integrate large, heterogeneous datasets while maintaining interpreti…
Automating the Past
Based on my opening keynote at DH2025, this article examines the impact that transformer-based machine learning brings to the interpretive work of historians. The discussion begins by revisiting an earlier phase of my research, which focused on digitally mediated, multiscale analysis – or what I refer to as ‘digital (re)reading’ – using database queries to detect structural patterns in digitized historical sources. Building on this foundation, I …
Computational and Text Analysis Methods (3 works) · Digital Humanities and Scholarship (3 works) · China (2 works) · Digital humanities (2 works) · Digitization (2 works) · Scholarship (2 works) · Sociology (2 works) · Applications of artificial intelligence (1 works) · Architecture (1 works) · Art (1 works)