Research is no longer just published on paper; it is also becoming a digital native, as Samuel Liebhaber, a researcher from Middlebury College (USA), demonstrated through his digital humanities project called “When melodies gather.” He was presenting at a seminar organized by the ICS’s Public Discourse project at the University of Navarra.

"The digital humanities allow us to imagine new ways of expressing academic narratives and of visualizing related data," the researcher noted. Liebhaber is an expert in Arabic literature and researches the poetic tradition of the Mahra, a Yemeni community of around 200,000 members whose language is oral. "Poetry composition in this tradition is based on a cognitive and psychological experience that is exclusively oral," he explained.

How is it possible to publish on this topic and at the same time demonstrate the richness of Mahri poetry without just merely transcribing and translating it? To respond to this conundrum, Liebhaber worked with a team of technicians at his university, Middlebury College, and at Stanford University Press to present his research in a new, purely digital format.

His “When melodies gather” project is presented in the form of a website, on which users can interactively browse and access information according to their individual interests. The author notes that this interactivity improves participation with knowledge since "one can personalize the encounter with research in a way that is impossible with a printed text.”

However, the expert does not believe that the digital humanities will displace paper-based research. He believes that both can coexist and support one another.

An example of mutual support

To corroborate the possibility of these two different formats mutually supporting one another, he brings the example of the Mahri language to the table. The Mahra population is a small holdout in the Arab world; its entire population is bilingual, and uses Arabic to write in educational centers and in the media, but privately maintains the tradition of the Mahri language.

The expert pointed out that younger generations have become accustomed to speaking Arabic as the more useful language for their daily lives, which could endanger the language’s preservation since a break in generational transmission would drastically reduce the number of speakers.

However, Liebhaber ensures that, in his interviews with the Mahra people, they did not see Arabic as an invasive language, nor did they see their language as in danger of extinction. He affirmed that the Mahra are "proud of their Arab heritage and its extraordinary language in a way that is on par with their pride in the Mahri language." As he explained, these linguistic traditions have managed to mix so thoroughly that they maintain a balance "that changes from generation to generation."

Thus, the researcher believes that the Mahra people are an example for other bilingual communities, showing that having two languages ​​does not have to be a problem for coexistence. "The Mahra people offer us a linguistic model in which two different languages ​​coexist without the need for a sense of crisis or conflict between them," he concluded.

The expert spoke on this topic within the framework of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project, “Locked between formulas: creativity in oral and transitional poetic texts' (ORFORCREA), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program (2017-2019, project 749952).