We look forward to welcoming you and many scholars of the pre-print era, computer scientists & other experts from around the world, including: @mariekem.bsky.social, Peter Turchin, Abdulaziz Suleiman Al-Harbi, Badr Hamed Al-Harbi, John Boyer, Colin Brisson, Eltjo Buringh …

Ars Inquirendi@darkarchives.bsky.social · 2mo ago

In-person registration includes a sandwich lunch on Friday & Saturday, along with drinks and refreshments. And do register for our Saturday evening conference dinner, where you can chat further with our presenters. arsinq.com

In-person registration includes a sandwich lunch on Friday & Saturday, along with drinks and refreshments. And do register for our Saturday evening conference dinner, where you can chat further with our presenters. arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi 2026 — Querying Pre-Print Cultures with LLMs

St Edmund Hall, Oxford · Online — 20–22 November 2026. Registration open. Keynotes by Peter Turchin and Marieke Meelen.

arsinq.com

Additionally, we offer three in-person / online workshops, one each morning. Using LLMs in Scholarship (Fri, Thomas Grant) Vibe-Coding for Medievalists (Sat, @sebdm.bsky.social) & Customizing LLMs (Sun, Ben Kiessling). From using LLMs to building your own! arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi 2026 — Querying Pre-Print Cultures with LLMs

St Edmund Hall, Oxford · Online — 20–22 November 2026. Registration open. Keynotes by Peter Turchin and Marieke Meelen.

arsinq.com

Concluding Day 3 is Working together with AI agents, with Sarah Bowen Savant: as agents rapidly advance, & with them the technical work scholars can do for themselves, how should collaboration with computer scientists & research software engineers change? arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi@darkarchives.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Day 3. Ethics, Attribution & Digital Priesthood. LLMs synthesise the words of millions, living & dead, but the debts vanish. Pre-print cultures carried credit for it, from isnad to apparatus. What, then, is the LLM age's equivalent, & who builds it? arsinq.com

Day 3. Ethics, Attribution & Digital Priesthood. LLMs synthesise the words of millions, living & dead, but the debts vanish. Pre-print cultures carried credit for it, from isnad to apparatus. What, then, is the LLM age's equivalent, & who builds it? arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi@darkarchives.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Day 3. Sovereign Models Panel. How do we better align LLMs with pre-print-era research: build or adapt our own, or feed frontier models with photos? What best serves traditions the training data neglects? Left alone, the models will just invent them ... arsinq.com

Day 3. Sovereign Models Panel. How do we better align LLMs with pre-print-era research: build or adapt our own, or feed frontier models with photos? What best serves traditions the training data neglects? Left alone, the models will just invent them ... arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi@darkarchives.bsky.social · 2mo ago

On Day 3, we turn to Sovereignty: how do scholars exert authority over a transformative technology that they did not build, & whose breathtaking development perhaps no one can control, predict, or even fully understand? arsinq.com

On Day 3, we turn to Sovereignty: how do scholars exert authority over a transformative technology that they did not build, & whose breathtaking development perhaps no one can control, predict, or even fully understand? arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi 2026 — Querying Pre-Print Cultures with LLMs

St Edmund Hall, Oxford · Online — 20–22 November 2026. Registration open. Keynotes by Peter Turchin and Marieke Meelen.

arsinq.com

Peter then joins 10 presenters to explore pre-print-era history at machine-scale: from capital goods in 75k images, & cultural resistance in 23k books, to dispersed dissent & kinship, Qing governance, crop choice, & total reading of Islamicate culture. arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi@darkarchives.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Day 2: our Machine-Scale History keynote is cliodynamics founder Peter Turchin: A Socio-Technical System for Investigating the Dynamics of Political Instability – why it recurs, & how combined AI-human expertise can build the data to test the theories. arsinq.com

Day 2: our Machine-Scale History keynote is cliodynamics founder Peter Turchin: A Socio-Technical System for Investigating the Dynamics of Political Instability – why it recurs, & how combined AI-human expertise can build the data to test the theories. arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi 2026 — Querying Pre-Print Cultures with LLMs

St Edmund Hall, Oxford · Online — 20–22 November 2026. Registration open. Keynotes by Peter Turchin and Marieke Meelen.

arsinq.com

On Day 2 (21 Nov), we turn to Machine-Scale History: LLMs let us reconstruct lives, networks & societies at once impractical scales – yet the pre-print past reaches them through later editions & scholarship. What can be inferred at scale, & how tested? arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi 2026 — Querying Pre-Print Cultures with LLMs

St Edmund Hall, Oxford · Online — 20–22 November 2026. Registration open. Keynotes by Peter Turchin and Marieke Meelen.

arsinq.com

Day 1 concludes with Scholarly Presentation From Editions to Graphs, chaired by Elizabeth Solopova: how do we represent, & trust, the torrents of new LLM data? Scholars discuss medieval forgery, Italian accounts, brand-new editorial forms, Islamic maps, & more! arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi@darkarchives.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Day 1. Marieke is then joined by a dozen more scholars of Old World cultures, to discuss how LLMs turn writing & other artefacts into usable evidence both within a culture, & across them, as a totality - from the Sahara, to Greece, Arabia, Rus, India & China!

Day 1. Marieke is then joined by a dozen more scholars of Old World cultures, to discuss how LLMs turn writing & other artefacts into usable evidence both within a culture, & across them, as a totality - from the Sahara, to Greece, Arabia, Rus, India & China!

Ars Inquirendi@darkarchives.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Day 1. Our Graphosphere keynote is Marieke Meelen (Cambridge) @mariekem.bsky.social, Language Models for Cultural Heritage: a Case Study in Historical Tibetan - on how LLMs turn manuscripts into searchable corpora, & where other methods take over. arsinq.com

Day 1. Our Graphosphere keynote is Marieke Meelen (Cambridge) @mariekem.bsky.social, Language Models for Cultural Heritage: a Case Study in Historical Tibetan - on how LLMs turn manuscripts into searchable corpora, & where other methods take over. arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi@darkarchives.bsky.social · 2mo ago

On day 1 (Fri 20 Nov), we consider how LLMs are transforming our grasp of the pre-print-era Graphosphere - all that was written or otherwise laden with meaning before movable-type printing spread, & its interrelations – along with all other evidence. arsinq.com

On day 1 (Fri 20 Nov), we consider how LLMs are transforming our grasp of the pre-print-era Graphosphere - all that was written or otherwise laden with meaning before movable-type printing spread, & its interrelations – along with all other evidence. arsinq.com

Ars Inquirendi@darkarchives.bsky.social · 2mo ago

In the LLM era, what can we learn about the pre-print past that we could not before, and what would justify believing it? Join over 30 scholars at Ars Inquirendi, 20–22 Nov, Oxford & online, to find out. Register & programme at arsinq.com. In-person places limited.

In the LLM era, what can we learn about the pre-print past that we could not before, and what would justify believing it? Join over 30 scholars at Ars Inquirendi, 20–22 Nov, Oxford & online, to find out. Register & programme at arsinq.com. In-person places limited.

Announcing QUINCUNX: A Discovery Engine for the World's Sparse Domains, from Lost Manuscripts to the Fossil Record, & Where They Join ... arsinq.com/articles/qui... doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

QUINCUNX: A Discovery Engine for the World's Sparse Domains, & Where They Join — Blueprint and First Registered Test on Historical Pre-Print-Era Evidence

Blueprint and First Registered Test on Historical Pre-Print-Era Evidence

arsinq.com

Register at medieval.ox.ac.uk/arsinquirendi to watch the recordings, join the Discord discussion, and join the live sessions tomorrow. And take our quick LLM poll — we’d love to hear how you’re using them!

There will follow a roundtable on how LLMs are reshaping the pre-modernist's modus operandi - from web chat to autonomous agents and customised AI - both offering an entirely new research tool that is rapidly superseding older IT;

Later that afternoon we move onto 'Creating Research Machines with LMMs', with the following presentations now out, and available to view:

A quick reminder that Ars Inquirendi opens tomorrow with our Keynote from Prof. Maurizio Forte (Duke), "Rethinking the Past: An AI Perspective in Archaeology" - relevant to anyone who researches Old World cultures before the dominance of movable type print!