Mike Kestemont, PhD, is a research professor in the department of Literature at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). He specializes in computational text analysis for the Digital Humanities. Whereas his work has a strong focus on historic literature, his precious research has covered a wide range of topics in literary history, including classical, medieval, early modern and modernist texts. Mike took up an interest in neural networks and currently explores various applications of this exciting technology in the Arts and Humanities. Together with his Polish colleagues Maciej Eder and Jan Rybicki he is involved in the Computational Stylistics Group. Mike lives in Brussels, tweets in English and codes in Python.
“Time Machine is such a catalyst in bringing together people who have a wider and longer horizon of thinking when it comes to digital developments in contemporary science and scholarship. Interacting with this insanely diverse community has been great: I met people from a vast array of fields ranging from literary scholars like myself, who are fascinated by medieval manuscripts, to urban planning specialists who envision smart cities, to a patrimonial institution that needs a collection of Finnish spoons digitised, and to researchers who are transfixed by satellite images. This project could be nothing less than a metamorphosis for the future cultural heritage landscape of Europe. The Antwerp Time Machine has a rather unique position as we have the support of the city council of Antwerp and the bulk of its GLAM sector. But also our National Library and our State Archive in Belgium have been eager to jump on board Time Machine’s pan-European endeavours, together with many other high-profile institutions, such as Ghent University.”
