The Right to Left (RTL) conference focuses on research and pedagogy related to the past, present and future of languages which are written from right to left, as well as their multilingual, multiscript and multidirectional cultural contexts. While these languages have posed technical challenges to computing, they have also become the object of increasing attention in global digital culture. RTL aims to encourage digital research in and about right-to-left language cultures, providing a frame for thinking beyond the left-to-right-centric assumptions of contemporary computing.

The RTL conference welcomes contributions from researchers, developers and independent scholars working on research and pedagogy of any living or historical RTL language, including, but not limited to, Arabic, Azeri, Hebrew, Kurdish, Ottoman, Persian, Syriac or Urdu. We are particularly interested in engagement and dialogue with societies in which those are spoken or read today.

The conference consists of two parts: an institute lecture and pre-recorded presentations + a live discussion.

The institute lecture will take the form of a one-hour live opening keynote that will be hosted on 8 June 2021, 8:30-9:20am Pacific Time. The lecture will be recorded and posted online after the conference.

The presentations will be pre-recorded and posted in advance of the conference. The two-hour live discussion and Q&A for the presentations will be hosted right after the institute lecture, on 8 June 2021, 9:30-11:30am Pacific Time.

Conference chairs: David Joseph Wrisley (NYU Abu Dhabi) and Kasra Ghorbaninejad (U Victoria)

Registered participants can access the page containing the presentations here: dhsi.org/dhsi-2021-online-edition/dhsi-2021-online-edition-aligned-conferences-and-events/dhsi-2021-right-to-left/full-access. Please use the credentials shared with you via email to access the website.

1. canadian HSS commons
2. DHSI
3. ETCL
4. INKE