Conferences

Eleven days, mainly online and free of charge: more than twenty invited reports, four forums, two workshops and three parallel classes, opened on 26 July by keynotes from Yuan Yulin, Cameron Campbell and Zhan Weidong and closed on 4 August by Su Qi.

Dates

25 July to 4 August 2026

Place

Suiyuan Campus, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, and online

Partners

HKUST; Nanjing Normal University; University of Macau; Nanjing Agricultural University; BNBU

Classes

Database programming, methods of language statistics, large-model programming

Released

Xunzi ancient-text multimodal model 3.0, a graded character list for Old Chinese, and the Chinese Room system

Also

A visit to the Six Dynasties Museum; a national language technology empowerment case in June 2026

In numbers

• ~2,000applicants
• ~400universities
• 270admitted
• 130 / 140on site / online
• 20+invited reports
• 4forums

Themes

• Corpus and language data infrastructure
• Large language models and agent memory
• Digitisation of classical texts and ancient-language processing
• Chinese foundations, technology empowerment, case-based teaching, open sharing

Selected guests

• Li Bin 李斌 led the school; Nanjing Normal University
• Yuan Yulin 袁毓林 opening keynote on linguistic research in the age of AI; University of Macau
• Cameron Campbell 康文林 opening keynote on digital humanities, distant reading and quantitative history; HKUST
• Zhan Weidong 詹衛東 opening keynote on generating data instead of explaining language; Peking University
• Su Qi 蘇祺 closing keynote on AI and the humanities, from tool use to theoretical guidance; Peking University

A forum on language and writing standards, held on 27 July 2026, on extending language norms from human use to machine use: more than 130 scholars attended and more than 2,000 watched the live stream.

Dates

27 July 2026

Place

Suiyuan Campus, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing

Partners

HKUST; Nanjing Normal University; University of Macau; Nanjing Agricultural University; BNBU; attended by the Ministry of Education Institute of Applied Linguistics

Format

On site with a live online stream; the first language standards special topic of its kind

Standards cited

Machine-synthesised Putonghua proficiency testing; basic terminology for AI corpora

Aim

A cross-disciplinary platform deepening the integration of language standards with AI

In numbers

• 130+scholars on site
• 2,000+live viewers

Themes

• A language standards system for the intelligent era
• Han-character encoding and million-character character banks
• Variant characters and simplified-to-traditional conversion
• Ancient-book digitisation standards and font libraries

Selected guests

• Li Hui 李慧 language standards for the intelligent era; Ministry of Education Institute of Applied Linguistics
• Tao Yang 陶揚 Han-character encoding; China Electronics Standardization Institute
• Liu Huidan 劉匯丹 Han-character encoding; Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Su Ruixin 蘇瑞欣 ancient-book digitisation and fonts; Gulin Digital Media

A forum held on 3 August 2026, at which Simon Mahony of University College London and the journal editor Edward Vanhoutte examined how generative AI reshapes digital humanities.

Dates

3 August 2026

Place

Suiyuan Campus, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing

Partners

HKUST; Nanjing Normal University; University of Macau; Nanjing Agricultural University; BNBU

Talk

Reimagining Digital Humanities in the Age of Generative AI (Mahony)

Themes

• Digital humanities reshaped by generative AI

Selected guests

• Simon Mahony Reimagining Digital Humanities in the Age of Generative AI; University College London
• Edward Vanhoutte on digital humanities in the age of AI; editor of an international digital humanities journal

An expert meeting in two halves: drafting terminology for artificial intelligence corpus annotation, then discussing how corpora should be evaluated and assessed, with twenty experts from universities and industry.

Dates

12 May 2026

Place

Suiyuan Campus, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing

Partners

HKUST; Language Big Data and Computational Humanities Research Centre, Nanjing Normal University; guided by the Ministry of Education Institute of Applied Linguistics

Stage one

Core concepts, term definitions, and compatibility with existing standards and industry needs

Stage two

Overall approach, classification framework, evaluation dimensions, implementation path and a follow-up working mechanism

Next

Complete the draft standard and advance research and pilots; no dated plan published

In numbers

• 20experts

Themes

• A terminology system for AI corpus annotation
• Corpus detection and evaluation

Selected guests

• Liu Pengjian 劉朋建 standards development; Director, Institute of Applied Linguistics, Ministry of Education
• Ben Guodong 賁國棟 humanities and social sciences with AI; Deputy Party Secretary, NNU
• Sha Xianyi 沙先一 chaired the meeting; Dean of the School of Chinese Language and Literature, NNU
• Li Bin 李斌 corpora, annotation standards and progress on the terminology standard; NNU

Ten days and free of charge, with Class A on corpus programming and Class B on large models, seven evening classes, ten morning lectures and three research results launched at the opening.

Dates

26 July to 5 August 2025

Place

BNBU campus, Tangjiawan, Zhuhai, and online by Tencent Meeting

Partners

HKUST; Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University; University of Macau; Nanjing Normal University

Class A

Corpus programming with MySQL and PHP: Li Bin, Chang Bolin (NNU), Ma Haonan (BNBU)

Class B

Large models and the Xunzi model: Wang Dongbo, Liu Chang, Zhao Zhixiao (NJAU)

Released

A digital study of pre-Qin bronze bells; an Old Chinese wordnet of nearly fifty thousand entries; Xunzi 2.0

Completion

An independently built database site or model application plus a three-minute recorded explanation

In numbers

• 980applications
• 291universities
• 18countries and regions
• 200admitted
• 16scholars

Themes

• Corpus-based construction of humanities big data
• Building corpora with MySQL and PHP
• The ancient-text model Xunzi: development, prompting, local deployment

Selected guests

• Li Bin 李斌 Class A lead instructor; Nanjing Normal University
• Wang Dongbo 王東波 Class B lead instructor; Nanjing Agricultural University
• Yuan Yulin 袁毓林 invited lecturer; University of Macau
• Zhuang Yiren 莊以仁 digital study of pre-Qin bronze bells; BNBU
• Shen Wei 沈威 statistical methods in language research, 31 July 2025; Central China Normal University