On November 2, the “East Asian History and Digital Humanities” forum was hosted by the School of Northeast Asia Studies and the Northeast Asian History and Documentation Research Center successfully at Shandong University at Weihai.

Han Dongyu, Vice President of Northeast Normal University, member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, and Professor from the School of History and Culture delivered a keynote speech. The Frontier Forum was chaired by Professor Miao Wei, Director of the Northeast Asian History and Documentation Research Center. Professor Liu Baoquan from School of Northeast Asia Studies, Associate Professor Han Guosheng from Business School of Shandong University, More than 30 teachers and students from Professor Miao’s New Liberal Arts Laboratory team, from School of Northeast Asia Studies, School of Mechatronical, Electrical & Information Engineering, School of Cultural and Communication, as well as School of Translation and Interpretation attended the meeting.

In response to the requirements of the new era, Professor Han Dongyu pointed out how the “old” discipline of History Studies should be “new”, and pointed out that the “Cai”, “Xue” and “Shi” of Tang equal today’s literature, history and philosophy. Humanities and social sciences need to integrate these three disciplines. It is necessary to break through the barriers of literature, history and philosophy, and restore history to its objective and true nature. At the same time new technologies and new methods should be used so that history can shine with new glory. Chen Jianhong from the laboratory team gave a special report on “Exploration and Practice of the New Liberal Arts Laboratory”, introducing the main research work of the New Liberal Arts Laboratory, namely cross-border, multilingual data mining, multilingual processing, machine translation, and ancient Chinese literature text analysis. Wang Yifan gave a presentation on “The Interpretation of the Shi Ji from the Perspective of Artificial Intelligence”, and analyzed the application of artificial intelligence technology in traditional historical research. Professor Han Dongyu spoke highly of the research work of Professor Miao’s team, and pointed out that their work has built a truth-seeking and pragmatic basis for historical research and explored the construction of new liberal arts in the discipline of history studies. The teachers and students at the meeting actively interacted, discussed enthusiastically, and gained a deeper understanding of academic research from the perspective of the new liberal arts.

In the past few years, Shandong University has actively promoted the construction of new liberal arts and has achieved remarkable results. Professor Miao’s New Liberal Arts Laboratory team used digital technology to interpret the humanities and social sciences, and made useful explorations of new professions, new directions, new models, and new theories in the construction of new liberal arts, proving with practice the feasibility and expectability of new liberal arts.