The Abundance of Medieval Literature: An Eco-Computational Perspective

Mike Kestemont, PhD (Full Research Professor, Department of Literature, University of Antwerp) works on quantitative models of culture in the context of the Computational Humanities. The persistence of information over long stretches of time is his key research topic at the moment. In a new framework that we call Cultural Ecology, we import empirical methods from ecology and biostatistics to provide innovative quantitative models of cultural change and survival, in particular in the domain of medieval literature. Mike’s expertise lies with the application of machine learning and natural language processing for the analysis of noisy, historic data. Together with Folgert Karsdorp and Allen Riddell he published a monograph on data science for humanists with Princeton UP (2021).