ICDAR 2021 Workshop on Computational Paleography (1st edition)
Thank you!
We would like to thank all the participants and contributors once again for making IWCP such a successful and fruitful event. Despite the Corona pandemic, we had a total of 70 participants (27 onsite and 43 online). All hygine guidelines have been followed.

Description
The goal of this workshop is to bridge the gap between the different research fields analysing handwritten scripts in ancient artefacts. It is mainly targeting (but not limited to) computer scientists, natural scientists and humanists involved in the study of ancient writing systems (scripts and their components) as well as their material (characteristics of the physical inscribed objects). By fostering discussion between the three communities, it aims to favor future interdisciplinary collaborations that will tackle actual research questions on ancient manuscripts.
Exchanges between manuscript specialists in the Humanities rarely overcome the chronological and geographical boundaries of each discipline. However, when it comes to applying optical, chemical or computational analysis, these boundaries are often no longer relevant. Computer scientists are keen to confront their methodologies with actual research questions based on solid data. Natural scientists open new perspectives by focusing on the physical properties of the written artefacts. In many cases, only a collaboration between experts from the three communities yields significant results.
The workshop is planned for half a day with a keynote talk, oral presentations and lively discussions. Submitted papers will be peer-reviewed and accepted submissions will be presented in the workshop and published with ICDAR proceedings in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.
Safety measures will be considered with regards to COVID-19. In case of necessity, the event will be held with options for online participation. All accepted papers will be published in the IWCP2021 proceedings.
If you have any question about the workshop, please send an email to Dr. Isabelle Marthot-Santaniello( i.marthot-santaniello"AT"unibas.ch) and Dr. Hussein Mohammed( hussein.adnan.mohammed"AT"uni-hamburg.de).
Topics of Interest
- Handwriting style analysis (definition and identification of script types)
- Recognition, detection, classification and comparison of handwriting elements (such as letters, words, and symbols)
- Writer identification and retrieval
- Joins identification among manuscript fragments
- Manuscript clustering according to measurement of key features in scripts and layout
- Recovery of illegible/lost writing (palimpsest, faded/damaged writing)
- Material analysis of inks, colourants, binders and writing supports
- Non-invasive, on-site investigations of written artefacts
- Reconstruction of writing processes
- Provenance studies
- Dating terminus post quem
- Paleographic applications of handwriting modelling
- Quantitative methods applied to Paleography
- Software applications supporting paleographical research
- Virtual Research Environments, Virtual Libraries and annotated corpora supporting paleographical research (e.g. IIIF-based)
- Historical research questions based on challenging handwritten corpora requiring computational support
For work on historical documents in general that are not focusing on handwriting/paleography, we recommend you have a look at HIP2021.
Dates
- Submission Deadline: extended to May 17, 2021
- Acceptance Notification: June 17, 2021
- Camera Ready: July 5, 2021
- Workshop: September 7, 2021