[INDOLOGY] Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series: SEBASTIAN NEHRDICH, "DharmaNexus as a Multilingual Graph of Buddhist Intertextuality: Design Choices, Research Uses, and Future Applications" March 17, 2026

[Charles DiSimone]

Dear Friends,


I am pleased to announce the next talk in the Gandhāra Corpora Lecture
Series, which will also be the first talk in the Spring 2026 Permanent
Training in Buddhist Studies of the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.


Title:

DharmaNexus as a Multilingual Graph of Buddhist Intertextuality: Design
Choices, Research Uses, and Future Applications

Speaker:

PROF. SEBASTIAN NEHRDICH, TOHOKU UNIVERSITY



Timing:

Tuesday, March 17 @ 17.00 CET



Location:

Vergaderzaal 0.1 Simon Stevin,
Plateau - Rozier, Campus Boekentoren
9000 Gent, Belgium


Abstract:

Locating textual parallels, translations, citations, and topically related
passages across vast collections of texts in multiple languages is a basic
requirement of philological work in Buddhist Studies. Recent advances in
digitization, OCR, and cross-lingual information retrieval have
fundamentally changed access to this kind of evidence, with far-reaching
implications for how philological research can be conducted. A central
component in this context is DharmaNexus: a database that stores
intertextual relationships between passages across languages and sources,
and that supports the retrieval and comparison functions used in the
Dharmamitra tool ecosystem.
In this presentation, I will discuss DharmaNexus as a verifiable “evidence
layer” for AI-assisted multilingual research. I will highlight key design
choices and show how intertextual relationships are determined and
represented. I will also demonstrate how this data is already used in
research-facing tools for discovering and inspecting parallels and reuse
patterns in Buddhist literature. Finally, I will address limitations and
risks that can arise from over-reliance on these systems, and outline
further possible research applications enabled by this architecture.



Bio:

Sebastian Nehrdich is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Tohoku
University. He completed his PhD in Computational Linguistics at the
University of Düsseldorf, co-supervised by Oliver Hellwig and Kurt Keutzer.
He holds an MA in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hamburg. His work
integrates digital philology, Buddhist textual analysis, and machine
learning. He serves as Director of the Dharmamitra project that was founded
at the Berkeley AI Research Lab (BAIR), has managed the ML infrastructure
of the ChronBMM project, and has led the development of the BuddhaNexus
platform 2018-2023, now continued as DharmaNexus.


All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and
hybrid online. Please register for the series through this Google Form:
https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforms.gle%2FTwffQCPuVipUpMvk6&data=05%7C02%7CCharles.DiSimone%40UGent.be%7Ca984792a7db34868a14e08de2290d4a8%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C638986202580359422%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=7bTf6YE8T7EZCgYnoWbgz%2B3tGa19cyMv3CYIxAUXHqU%3D&reserved=0>



Friendly Greetings,

Charles


Prof. Dr. Charles DiSimone
Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies & Indology
Department of Languages and Cultures
Ghent University
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