How to Rewrite Malaysian History • Capstone Project
This was such a rogue Capstone project where I banked hard on breadth over depth, trying to create something tangible across several mediums and somehow tie them all together. In the end, I made a GitHub repo with the code I used for data analysis, built an interactive website from scratch and designed infographics on Instagram.
This Capstone walks through the end-to-end process of producing works that engage the public in meaningful dialogue about how Malaysia came to be, what Malaysia is and all it could be. (1) It examines the challenges of conducting historical research on Malaysia in the archivisation process and access to sources. (2) It suggests methodologies from the digital humanities for research, namely social network analysis, geospatial mapping and an in-depth case study on webscraping English and Malay media articles on vernacular education and analysing them through Natural Language Processing tasks. (3) It provides a case study to illustrate how historical scholarship can be accessible to the public through an interactive website and Instagram infographic on the May 13 racial riots.
