How to Conduct Asian Studies during the Pandemic?
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Travel restrictions caused by the pandemic have forced scholars in Asian studies, as also in other disciplines, to redefine their methods of data gathering. In order to help students and researchers in Asian Studies to find alternative ways of collecting data, the Finnish University Network for Asian Studies provides here a list of relevant resources. The page is updated continuously.
Emphasis is put on digital research methods. They not only enable researchers to collect digital data at a distance, but they also provide tools for computer-assisted analysis of big data. Given the exponentially expanding amount of digital data, knowledge of these methods opens up possibilities for new approaches in research.
The Asia Network is also developing online teaching materials about online ethnographic methods and computer assisted methods to help students and scholars to redesign their data collection methods. These online lectures will be launched in early 2021.
Fieldwork at a distance
Articles
Blum S D (2020)
Fieldwork from Afar Anthropology News website, September 10, 2020
Jowett A (2020)
Carrying out qualitative research under lockdown – Practical and ethical considerations . LSE Impact Blog
Sato J(2020)
Research at a Distance: Area Studies in the Post-Pandemic Era
International Journal of Asian Studies, 17, 105–108
Wood EJ, Rogers D, Sivaramakrishnan K. and Rene Almeling (2020)
Resuming Field Research in Pandemic Times
items. Insights from the Social Sciences
Resource collections
Lupton D (editor) (2020)
Doing fieldwork in a pandemic (crowd-sourced document).
Samuels F (editor)
Tips for collecting primary data in a Covid-19 era. Live repository. ODI Toolkits
Digital research methods
General
Breaking Methods Webinar Series
Hosted by the Vitalities Lab, UNSW Sydney and the Australian Research Council Centre for Automated Decision-Making + Society
Doing Digital Scholarship (social sciences)
“Doing Digital Scholarship offers a self-guided introduction to digital scholarship, designed for digital novices. It allows you to dip a toe into a very large field of practice.”
Introduction to Digital Humanities. Free Online course. Harvard University.
“Develop skills in digital research and visualization techniques across subjects and fields within the humanities.”
Digital scholarship service, Tools. The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library
LSE Digital Ethnography Collective Reading List. Shared doc
UK Data Service. Youtube videos about data-mining techniques and much more
For example: Webinar. Becoming a computational social scientist
Resources on digital research methods in Asian studies
Schneider, Florian (2015)
Searching for “Digital Asia” in its Networks: Where the Spatial Turn Meets the Digital Turn.
Asiascape: Digital Asia, 2(1-2), 57-92.
Chinese studies
Digital China
“Developing new digital methods for the study of China’s past and present. A list of digital things related to the field of Chinese studies curated by Kwok-leong Tang, the Digital China Fellow of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. “
Journal of Chinese History. Special issue: Digital Humanities
Ng Wai Foong (2019)
Beginner’s Guide to Sentiment Analysis for Simplified Chinese using SnowNLP, Medium , 2019
⇒Articles in which digital methods have been used
Ying Wang,Heng Li,Zezhou Wu (2019)
Attitude of the Chinese public toward off-site construction: A text mining study
Journal of Cleaner Production, 20 November
Fucheng You et al (2018 )
Design of Data Mining of WeChat Public Platform Based on Python
J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 1069 012017
Jing Zeng, Chung-hong Chan, and Mike S. Schäfer (2020)
Contested Chinese Dreams of AI? Public discourse about Artificial intelligence on WeChat and People’s Daily Online.
Information, Communication & Society, Ahead-Of-Print, 1-22
Japanese studies
Digital Humanities Japan wiki.
” This site is a guide to digital resources related to Japan, including but not limited to online databases, datasets, tutorials, syllabi, and other digital work.”
Contains for example: Publications on Japan-related Digital Studies
Korean studies
Cha, J. (2018)
Digital Korean studies: recent advances and new frontiers
Digital Library Perspectives, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 227-244.
South Asian studies
Research tools: South Asian Studies: Digital Humanities for SAS. Princeton University Library