AnnualReport2020

ONTOLOGY-BASED DATA INTEGRATION FOR THE
DIGITAL HUMANITIES
LE STUDIUM CONFERENCES
AROUND THE PROJECT
Dr Emilio Maria Sanfilippo
LE STUDIUM Research Fellow
ARD 2020 INTELLIGENCE DES PATRIMOINES Programme
From: Laboratory of Digital Sciences of
Nantes (LS2N) - Nantes
In residence at: Centre for Advanced
Studies in the Renaissance (CESR) - Tours
Nationality: Italian
Dates: April 2019 to August 2020
I got a bachelor and master degree in Philosophy
at the University of Catania (Italy). The interest for
interdisciplinary research brought me at Saarland
University (Germany), where I had a research
position at the Institute for Formal Ontology and
Medical Information Science (IFOMIS). I then
moved to the Italian CNR and I got a PhD in
Information and Communication Technologies
from the University of Trento with a thesis on formal
ontologies for manufacturing. I moved to France
with a postdoctoral position at the Laboratory of
Digital Sciences of Nantes (at the École Centrale de
Nantes and CNRS), where I continued the research
line of my PhD thesis. Thanks to the Le Studium
fellowship, I had a great research expertience at the
CESR (University of Tours and CNRS) about the use
of ontologies for cultural heritage. I am permanent
researcher at the Italian CNR since October 2020.
The project addresses fundamental and application research in the context
of the Digital Humanities. The driving idea is about the development of
computational ontologies by which multiple and heterogeneous datasets
can be published in a Web environment.
Why do these efforts require research support? Let us assume that your
data are about musical scores published in multiple editions. The way in
which you model and describe the data depends on both your understanding
of the musical domain and the terminology adopted in your working
environment. Here the research challenge starts to emerge. Indeed, when
you share data with other fellows, you must be sure that they understand
what you mean, hence, that the intended semantics of the data is preserved
in the data sharing process. For instance, what you call ‘musical piece’ may
be called ‘musical composition’ by others for whom ‘piece’ may be used
only for compositions’ parts. As simple as this example can be, it depicts
a source of traps, because there is no guarantee that third-parties fully
understand your data when the latter are shared. Nor computer systems
can fix this situation by their own, since they cannot access data meanings
if the latter are not explicitly encoded.
Ontologies are formal models representing the intended meaning of a
vocabulary of terms used, e.g., for data modeling/sharing in such a way
to make it processable by both humans and machines. The main purpose
is to enhance communication between humans, machines, or humansmachines
interactions.
In the context of the LE STUDIUM fellowship, I contribute to the design of
a Semantic Web ontology covering data spanning across several domains,
including musicology and the study of ancient documents, as well as biology
and natural heritage. The challenge is to define a conceptual framework
that is general enough to encompass such a variety of data while being
useful for concrete application settings. Also, despite the state of the art
is quite rich, there are several notions which lack a robust conceptual and
formal treatment, e.g., that of musical or literary work. For instance, when
two people read Shakespeare’s Hamlet, one in English and the other in
French, we commonly claim that they read the same novel, even though
the texts are different. Are there any principles behind this common-sense
intuition? Is it possible to make a cut-off distinction between a novel and
its various texts? These and other questions are fundamental when data on
works have to be managed.
FAIR HERITAGE: DIGITAL METHODS, SCHOLARLY
EDITING AND TOOLS FOR CULTURAL AND NATURAL
HERITAGE
The purpose of the conference was
to bring together multiple research
communities and stakeholders
working with Open Science and FAIR
principles (Findable, Accessible,
Interoperable, Reusable) for data
management/sharing in the context
of heritage studies. As advocated
by the European Commission, FAIR
principles play a decisive role to
define guidelines and valuable tools
for managing data in robust ways.
We were particularly interested in
research questions addressing both
methodological and application
challenges emerging from data
management practices (e.g., data
modeling, sharing, integration,
analysis, etc.).
With the many talks given during the conference, participants exchanged a lot
of thoughts about research in the Digital Humanities by coming to know about
interesting research projects and initiatives world-wide. From a personal
side, the conference has also contributed to enrich my academic networking
allowing me to meet researchers with whom I have then started a fruitful
collaboration.
The Web conference was organized in collaboration with Xavier Rodier,
Director of the Maison de Sciences de l’Homme Val de Loire (MSH VdL).
We had about 30 talks about fundamental and application research in
the Digital Humanities; about 60 people participated to the conference.
Many of them engaged in discussions and produced a document that is
available on the Le Studium Web site. The recording of the conference
is available, too.
Oral communications
• Sanfilippo, E.M., Towards the ontological
analysis and modularization of CIDOC-CRM
(v.6.2.1). AT: 48th CIDOC-CRM SIG, virtual event,
22 November 2020
• Sanfilippo, E.M., Ontology engineering for
geological modeling. AT: Knowledge’s frontiers
in water unsaturated hydrogeosystems:
interface dynamics, heterogeneities &
couplings, Le Studium Workshop, 27-28 June,
2019, Orleans, France
• Sanfilippo, E.M., Introduction to ontology
engineering; Use of CIDOC-CRM for research
and development at the ARD Intelligences des
Patrimoines; support for tutorial on OnTop and
3M. AT: l’École DONIPAT, 14-18 October 2019,
Aussois, France
• Sanfilippo, E.M., Ontology engineering for
data modeling in musicology. AT: Conference
on Counterpoints: Renaissance Music and
Scholarly Debate in the Digital Domain, 14-16
November, 2019, Tours, France
Scientific communications
• Sanfilippo EM, Markhoff B, Pittet P. Ontological
Analysis and Modularization of CIDOC-
CRM. Proceedings of the 11th International
Conference Formal Ontologies in Information
Systems (FOIS); IOS Press, 2020.
• Masolo C, Sanfilippo EM, Lamé M, Pittet P.
Modeling concept drift for historical research
in the digital humanities. In 1st International
Workshop on Ontologies for Digital Humanities
and their Social Analysis (WODHSA). CEUR vol.
2518, 2019
• Lamé M, Pittet P, Ponchio F, Markhoff B,
Sanfilippo EM. Heterotoki: non-structured
and heterogeneous terminology alignment for
Digital Humanities data producers, vol. 2375,
2019
Prof. Benoist Pierre
Host Scientist
Human & Social Sciences 2020
84
Benoist Pierre is a full Professor (First Class)
at the University of Tours. In 2016, he has been
elected Director of the CESR (UFR and UMR
7323) and of I-Pat (Intelligence des Patrimoines
Programme) for five year, led by the CESR which
involves several hundred researchers and more
than 40 laboratories in the Centre-Val de Loire
Region. His research work, which was initially
on the relations between religion and politics in
modern-era Europe, is currently being developed
within the CESR according to three axes (i) the
analysis of court societies and their relation to the
State in modern Europe; (ii) the study of heritage
and more particularly châteaux heritage in the
Val de Loire; (iii) the notion of mediatisation and
promotion of sciences principally on culture,
heritage and humanities. Prof. B. Pierre has
published 12 books, 60 papers in international
peer review journals and presented 70 public talks.
Human & Social Sciences 2020
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