From September 19th to 20th, the Sino-French Cultural Heritage and Digital Humanities Doctoral Studies Conference, co-organized by Wuhan University, the Ministry of Education's Philosophy and Social Sciences Laboratory for Intelligent Computing of Cultural Heritage, the Sino-French Digital Culture and Heritage Research Center, and the École Nationale des Chartes, was held in Paris, France.

The forum aims to provide a platform for academic exchange between scholars from China and France, promoting research and cooperation in the field of cultural heritage. VIPs attended the opening ceremony were Taiyan Huang, CPC Secretary of Wuhan University, Michelle Bubenicek, President of the École Nationale des Chartes.

In his speech, Taiyan Huang stated that after more than four decades of development, Wuhan University has become an important window for educational, cultural, and scientific exchanges between China and France, and is hailed as a symbol of the fruitful cooperation and friendship between the two countries. Leveraging its strengths in information resource management and the interdisciplinary platform resources of the Laboratory for Intelligent Computing of Cultural Heritage, Wuhan University has maintained active academic exchanges and cooperation with the École Nationale des Chartes. This highlights a broad prospect for Sino-French collaboration in the digital preservation of cultural heritage and digital humanities research. Looking ahead, the Laboratory for Intelligent Computing of Cultural Heritage will play an even more significant role in promoting cultural and educational cooperation between the two institutions.

Michelle Bubenicek reviewed the collaboration history between Wuhan University and the École Nationale des Chartes in the fields of scientific research and talent cultivation, expressing high recognition of the achievements made by both parties. She stated that the two institutions should take advantage of the opportunity to renew their cooperation agreement to deepen the scope of collaboration and further intensify efforts in academic research and talent cultivation.

Christophe Gauthier, Director of Jean Mabillon Laboratory at the École Nationale des Chartes, expressed his vision for collaboration with the Laboratory for Intelligent Computing of Cultural Heritage. He believes that both parties share similar academic objectives in the field of cultural heritage research and should further strengthen their cooperation to jointly advance the digital preservation of cultural heritage.

Xiaoguang Wang, Director of the Intelligent Computing of Cultural Heritage, Associate Dean of the School of Information Management,Wuhan University, addressed and pointed out that cultural heritage plays an irreplaceable role in the process of national cultural communication and shaping the community with a shared future for mankind. Digital technology provides conditions for better protection of cultural heritage and digital humanities research. The two sides should take the doctoral studies conference as a starting point to establish a closer cooperative relationship.

There were three events in this Doctoral Studies Conference. Many Chinese and French scholars made research reports on topics such as automatic handwriting recognition, biographies of embodied virtual reality, de-semanteme of French vocabulary, digital reconstruction of annotation and sparse documents, construction of digital twin data system of cultural heritage and digitalization of complex grottoes, and had in-depth discussions with the participants.

Taiyan Huang and Michelle Bubenicek renewed the cooperation agreement on behalf of the two universities during the conference, further consolidating the cooperation foundation of the two universities in the fields of cultural heritage and digital humanities.