J·S·B

JoudySido Bozan

Digital Humanities · Arabic Studies · Research Software

I am an Arabist and research software developer at Freie Universität Berlin. I work on multilingual research infrastructure — and on what happens to digital research data after the funding ends.

Works → ORCID kalimat Closing the Gap Email

About

Multilingual research infrastructure, and the conditions under which humanities data outlives its funding.

  • Arabic Studies
  • Digital Humanities
  • Multilingual DH
  • Non-Latin script data
  • Research data management
  • Arabic sociology

I am a Research Software Developer at Freie Universität Berlin, where I contribute to the bilingual Arabic–English Living Handbook kalimat. My work concerns digital publication workflows, multilingual research infrastructures, and sustainable knowledge organisation on the WordPress-based Open Encyclopedia System — editorial workflows, community features, documentation, and training for digital scholarly publishing.

In parallel I work as researcher and developer on the Berlin University Alliance project Closing the Gap in Non-Latin Script Data II, which investigates the sustainability of digital humanities projects working with non-Latin script data. Through publications, workshops, consultations and tools, I work on the structural conditions that decide whether digital research resources outlive their funding.

My research explores the intersections of language, politics, culture and digital humanities in the Arab world — art and authoritarianism, humour as political resistance in Syrian television, and the transformation of Ahmad al-Sharaʿ's political discourse from jihadist leadership to state authority. I have also contributed to the WARRIOR project (Women And Radical Religion in Organized Resistance) at University College Dublin.

Positions

05 entries
Jul 2025 — present

Research Software Developer

kalimat · FUB-IT, Digital Research Infrastructure, Open Encyclopedia System

Berlin
Jun 2023 — Jul 2024

Student Researcher — WARRIOR

University College Dublin · School of Politics & International Relations

Dublin
Mar 2023 — Sep 2024

Student Tutor, Arabic, Semitic and Islamic Studies

Seminar of Arabic Studies, FU Berlin

Berlin
Mar 2022 — Sep 2023

Student Mentor

Seminar of Semitic and Arabic Studies, FU Berlin

Berlin

Education & Theses

2024 — 2025

M.A. Contemporary Arabic Studies

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona · Facultat de Traducció i Interpretació

The Transformation of Ahmad al-Sharʿ's (Abu Muhammad al-Jolani's) Media Discourse: From Jihad to Presidency — An Analytical Study.Nominated — IEMed Best Master's Thesis 2024/25

2023 — 2025

M.A. Arabic Studies

Freie Universität Berlin · Seminar of Arabic Studies

Echoes of Dissent: Analyzing Humor as a Form of Resistance in the Syrian Series “A Lost Village”.

2019 — 2023

B.A. History and Culture of the Near East

Freie Universität Berlin · focus in Arabic Studies

Art as an Immediate Threat to Dictatorships: The Al-Assad Dynasty Case.

Projects

2025 —FU Berlin · FUB-IT

kalimat. كلمات

The Arabic-language layer of a bilingual Living Handbook for the study of the Arabic literary tradition.

I build the Arabic content, navigation and indexing interfaces; the language and formatting functions that produce grammatically correct Arabic numeral and noun forms; bidirectional content presentation; and the API integrations that let a bilingual research platform exchange structured data with manuscript repositories such as HMML. I am the developer for the Arabic-language functionality and the designer of the site itself — alongside the code: editorial workflows, community features, user documentation and training for the researchers and editors who use the platform.

  • PHP
  • WordPress
  • MySQL
  • JavaScript
  • REST APIs
  • RTL / bidi
  • web design
Directed by

Prof. Dr. Beatrice GründlerKalimat: Keywords — A Vocabulary for the Study of the Arabic Literary Tradition

kalimat-keywords.net ↗
2024 —Berlin University Alliance

Closing the Gap II

What makes a digital humanities project's data survive after the funding ends.

Scalable JSON databases for research on non-Latin scripts and multilingual data. I analyse the limits of existing schemas, build visualisations of the project's findings, and designed a scoring system for assessing how sustainable a research project's data actually is. The same corpus produced a locally trained chatbot over the project's own sustainability data, presented as a case study in July 2025.

  • Python
  • JSON
  • data modelling
  • visualisation
  • NLP
Public at

A searchable database of research initiatives working with non-Latin writing systems, with map, timeline and visualisation views over the collected records.

closingthegap.github.io ↗

Works

Publications, talks & conferences
09 entries
2026

From Preservation to Dissemination: Sustainability in Non-Latin-Script Digital Humanities.

With Aibaniz Alieva and Christian Casey. Forthcoming, Open Access.

Article
BibTeX
@article{sidobozan2026preservation,
  author = {Sido Bozan, Joudy and Alieva, Aibaniz and Casey, Christian},
  title  = {From Preservation to Dissemination: Sustainability in
            Non-Latin-Script Digital Humanities},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {Forthcoming, Open Access}
}
Sep 2026

Confronting North–South Asymmetries in the Digital Age: The Ethics of Knowledge Production in Arabic Studies Projects.

With Johannes Stephan. Beyond the Western Lens — Pathways to Decolonising Higher Education.

Conference
May 2026

Data Survives, Projects Die: Rethinking Sustainability in Digital Humanities.

Closing the Gap in Non-Latin-Script Data.

ctg.hypotheses.org/617 ↗
Blog post
BibTeX
@misc{sidobozan2026datasurvives,
  author = {Sido Bozan, Joudy},
  title  = {Data Survives, Projects Die: Rethinking Sustainability
            in Digital Humanities},
  year   = {2026},
  month  = {5},
  howpublished = {Closing the Gap in Non-Latin-Script Data},
  url    = {https://ctg.hypotheses.org/617}
}
May 2026

Arabic Studies × NLP: Sprache, Macht und Methode.

Hands-on seminar on Arabic NLP, FUB-IT professional development series.

Seminar
Feb 2026

Strategieworkshop des Objective 3 2025.

Berlin University Alliance.

Conference
Sep 2025

AI-Augmented Visualizations and Dialogues for Sustainability Assessment in Non-Latin Script Research Data.

AI Methods for the Humanities — BIFOLD & Einstein Center.

Workshop
Jul 2025

Utilizing an AI-chatbot for sustainability research in DH — a case study in CtG.

Closing the Gap in Non-Latin Script Data.

Talk
Jun 2025

People Behind the Interface: Sustainability as a Social Process in DH.

Closing the Gap in Non-Latin-Script Data.

ctg.hypotheses.org/441 ↗
Blog post
BibTeX
@misc{sidobozan2025peoplebehind,
  author = {Sido Bozan, Joudy},
  title  = {People Behind the Interface: Sustainability as a Social
            Process in DH},
  year   = {2025},
  month  = {6},
  howpublished = {Closing the Gap in Non-Latin-Script Data},
  url    = {https://ctg.hypotheses.org/441}
}