Digital Humanities at MESA 2025
We invited attendees from the most recent Middle Eastern Studies Association’s Annual Meeting (MESA 2025) to report back on panels relevant to digital humanities, and to reflect on the state of the field. Here is what they had to say. [Stay tuned for reports on Islamic Law at MESA 2025.]
By: Sarah Slingluff (University of Maryland)
This year at MESA, three consecutive panels featured the work of scholars currently engaging with digital technologies to further the study of Islamicate civilizations. Broadly titled “Digital Reimaginings of Middle Eastern Studies,” the individual panels focused on methodology, historical re-imaginings, and pedagogy to support new research and digital outputs.
The first panel, “Crafting Virtual Worlds Brick by Brick,” highlighted how gaming engines like Twine, Unity, and Unreal can support decolonizing work. Participants discussed their use of gaming engines to present primary sources (as seen in Hajj Trail, Tripand Digital Munya 3) and to make virtual models of archaeological material and spaces for study (e.g., Madīnat al-Zahra’, al-Rummaniyya, and the Great Lantern of al-Mu’izz). In addition, this panel featured an analysis of how students engage with these platforms and how interactive digital media fosters critical engagement with cultural narratives and historical representation.
The second panel, “Constructing the Medieval Mediterranean in the Age of the Great Caliphs” presented work created in Ubisoft Anvil, Unity, QGIS, AutoCAD, RStudio, EinScan HX2 and VR technology, and 3D printing to bring together scholarship in art history, history, and archaeology related to the Abbasid, Fatimid, and Umayyad dynasties. Panelists presented their work on games (Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Digital Munya 2.0, The Córdoba Journey, The White Banner, The Muqaddimah: The Great Mosque of Kairouan), digital technologies for accessibility in museums (Meadows Museum, SMU), an imaginative immersive reconstruction of the Fatimid Bāb al-Dhahab, and the identification and classification of early Islamic residences in Samarra. A common theme of this panel was the importance of public outreach and engagement.
Finally, “Catalyzing Learning Technologies for Engagement in Islamic Histories” focused on how technologies like WordPress, Wix, Scalar, Storymap, Explor, and Blobstorage can be used to decolonize curricula. With an active focus on teaching and the effects of gaming on students, both psychologically and pedagogically, papers analyzed the ways in which these tools affect learning and learners. A strength of this panel was its geographical and temporal scope: from fourteenth-century North Africa to the twentieth-century Ottoman Empire and modern Azerbaijan.
As one of the organizers, I can say that I, along with Ali Asgar Alibhai (University of Texas at Dallas) and Michael Ernst (Temple University), hoped that these panels would bring those engaging with technologies for both study and pedagogy into the same space to think strategically, as a group, about future paths for decolonizing digital media. This also was a chance to highlight the work of students from outside of MENA studies, who have developed expertise in the field through their expertise in technologies.
A major theme that arose was the potential for digital media as a transformative pedagogical tool, particularly in creating immersive spaces in which both students and the public can interact with the past in tangible ways. Common challenges included a lack of funding, the absence of a central resource bank where other academics might access the aforementioned tools to support their teaching, and a need to think critically about the models needed to sustain future work in digital humanities. An unanswered question that will remain important is the role of AI—when and where it is appropriate and how those wishing to create games responsibly can engage with it and protect their intellectual property.
Working across disciplines is standard practice for those who presented, and it is encouraging to see the breadth and scope of Digital Humanities in the study of MENA histories. Stayed tuned for exciting work, publications, and conferences focused on digital media in Islamic studies.
