IAO Scholar: A global platform for the digital history of Modern China: By the doctoral students of the Lyons Institute for East Asian Studies (IAO-ENS Lyon)

IAO Scholar (IAO stands for "Lyons Institute for East Asian Studies" — "Institut d'Asie Orientale" in French) is a common platform that hosts six individual doctoral projects covering modern Chinese history. Its first goal is to build a digital archive as a base for a visual history of Modern China. It includes different types of visual materials (advertisements, films/motion pictures, photographs, posters). The project is supported by CNRS (standing for Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique) — IAO and the platform is hosted by Huma-Num to guarantee its sustainability. We use Omeka, a tool specifically designed for historians by historians (by the Center for History and News Media). The platform is structured by the six thematic projects (advertising, beauty, comedy, comics, nude, transportation). Each of us has her/his own separate section, but we can make connections and share contents and resources. As a work in progress and a collaborative project, the platform allows other people to contribute, managing different levels of user, and is open to everyone interested in joining the project under certain conditions. As a public platform, it makes available to everyone original materials or essays by the students at different stages of their research, virtual exhibits, demos, and resources about their research topic while providing control on copyright and the consent of the authors. The presentation during the conference will consist in a general introduction to the global project supported with a transversal virtual exhibit dealing with the visual imagery of Shanghai urban modernity crossing our three individual projects (advertizing, comedy, transportation).