Girls’ Day and Boys’ Day at the CSMC

Since 2002, the Girls’ Day gives schoolgirls the opportunity to spend a day getting to know professions that have so far been predominantly practised by men, especially in technical fields and the natural sciences. Since 2011, there has also been a parallel Boys’ Day, which, in turn, aims to interest boys in jobs with a high proportion of women. The CSMC has been participating in this initiative since 2023. As in previous years, we invited both girls and boys aged 10 to 15 and introduced them to different aspects of our research on written artefacts.

On Girls’ Day, the programme started with a session on various methods in computer science and material science that we use to examine the properties of manuscripts and other handwritten objects to learn more about how these objects were created. In the morning, the focus was on computer science. Sylvia Melzer and Thomas Asselborn showed the participants the advantages and disadvantages of various chatbots and gave them a first idea of their own scientific work at the Institute for Humanities-Centred AI (CHAI). In the afternoon, the focus was on archaeometry. In our Artefact Lab, under the guidance of Katerina Grigoriadou, Olivier Bonnerot, Kyle Ann Huskin, and Ivan Shevchuk, the participants got to know various devices that enable manuscript researchers to analyse these materials and combine philological and historical studies with chemical and physical investigations.

At the same time, the Boys’ Day began with an introduction to the world of cuneiform writing from ancient Mesopotamia. How were written artefacts produced in this oldest writing culture and how can we understand the messages from this distant past today? Szilvia Jáka-Sövegjártó provided insights into the field of Assyriology, which attempts to answer these questions. After the lunch break, the programme revolved around the special connection between music, manuscripts, and AI: Janine Droese explained how she and her colleagues from computer science are gaining new insights into historical music manuscripts.