Participants of the Pacific Neighborhood Consortium 2026 Annual Conference and Joint Meetings (PNC 2026) pose for a group photo.Academia Sinica Vice President and PNC Chair Hsin-Kun Peng delivers remarks at the opening ceremony.Ting-Ming Chen, President of Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts, delivered his welcome remarks at the opening ceremony.Professor Kiyonori Nagasaki of the Faculty of Letters, Keio University, discusses how AI and human expertise can be combined to build sustainable scholarly knowledge infrastructure for East Asian texts.Academic posters highlight trends in the integration of information technology across different fields of research.Academia Sinica Press displayed nearly 100 publications at the conference, showcasing the recent scholarly research from Academia Sinica.The Open Museum platform showcases the online exhibition of the Digital Humanities Research Project, along with its latest developments incorporating AI technologies.
The 2026 Annual Conference and Joint Meetings of the Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC) opened on September 9 at the Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts (DILA) in Jinshan District, New Taipei City, marking its return to Taiwan after nearly nine years. The three-day conference brings together more than 100 scholars from 13 countries and regions—Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Macao, Malaysia, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam. Shin-Kun Peng, Chair of the PNC and Vice President of Academia Sinica, said that as AI takes on a growing role in collecting, analyzing, and generating knowledge, the key question is how the technology can serve people, research, and society.
PNC was founded to use emerging internet and digital technologies to promote information exchange and research resource sharing among Pacific Rim countries, fostering closer ties. Under the theme “Intelligence in Context: Practices, Impact, and Connection,” this year’s conference continues PNC’s longstanding focus on technology and society. By bringing together participants across countries, disciplines, and generations, the conference aims to expand opportunities for knowledge sharing and interdisciplinary collaboration in the age of AI. At the closing ceremony, Vice President Peng will present a selection of Academia Sinica publications to DILA’s Library and Information Center to further promote academic resource sharing between the two institutions.
Three Keynote Addresses Explore Digital Humanities, Written Heritage, and Human-AI Collaboration
Kiyonori Nagasaki, Professor on the Faculty of Letters at Keio University, presents “The Roles of AI and Human Expertise in Building Scholarly Contexts: Perspectives from East Asian Text Encoding.” He notes that, while AI can support text transcription and data exploration, reliable, sustainable knowledge infrastructures still require scholarly interpretation, data models, and international standards.
Michael Friedrich, Professor Emeritus at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg, will speak on “Preserving, Studying, and Disseminating Written Heritage.” Focusing on manuscripts, stone carvings, inscriptions, and other writing forms, he examines their role in preserving human memory and emphasizes the importance of cross-institutional collaboration.
Lee-Feng Chien, Partner at Taiwan Leap Venture and former Managing Director of Google Taiwan, presents “The Evolution of AI Agents: Redefining Human-AI Collaboration.” He explores how autonomous AI agents are reshaping organizational workflows and work practices, and highlights the importance of uniquely human strengths such as critical thinking, strategic empathy, and visionary leadership in an era of human-AI collaboration. He also stresses the role of international collaboration in narrowing the AI divide.
Academia Sinica Showcases Digital Research Achievements as AI Expands the Horizons of Humanities Research
Reflecting the conference’s focus on the humanities and AI, this year’s program includes 124 papers, 18 academic posters, and four workshops organized by the US Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative.
Academia Sinica scholars are presenting digital humanities research on cross-cultural semantics, Qing-dynasty secret religious movements using optical character recognition and AI, and Buddhist history using the Digital Archive of Chinese Buddhist Temple Gazetteers. Other projects use the Open Museum to reconstruct discourse on warfare during the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties, and BERTopic to analyze translation themes in The Ladies’ Journal in the early Republican period. Additional research includes a multimedia digital ethnographic reading platform, automated spatial analysis combining large language models with geographic information systems, and archaeological studies of ancient maritime networks.
The conference also showcases the Center for Digital Cultures’ Digital Humanities Research Project, the Open Museum and its AI-powered exhibition recommendation function, and the Academia Sinica OCR and Text Correction Platform. Academia Sinica Press is also displaying nearly 100 scholarly publications.
Academia Sinica joined the PNC in 1994. Since relocating its headquarters to Academia Sinica in late 1997, the PNC has continued to connect research institutions and scholars across countries. From digital libraries, archives, and information exchange to today’s AI-driven transformation, it has remained committed to knowledge sharing, interdisciplinary collaboration, and regional connectivity.
PNC 2026 was organized by the PNC and Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts, and co-hosted by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education and the US Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative. It was jointly sponsored by the Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies, the Comprehensive Buddhist Electronic Text Archive Foundation, and the Taiwan Association for Digital Humanities, with technical support from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the IEEE Taipei Section.
PNC 2026 Conference Website
PNC 2026 Conference Program
