When the Self Becomes Data: Digital Twins, Identity, and AI Across Disciplines

Title: “When the Self Becomes Data: Digital Twins, Identity, and AI Across Disciplines”

Abstract

This talk presents three interconnected research trajectories that explore how the humanities and AI research productively intersect. 

First, Noran Amin introduces the AGYA-funded project “Digital Twin of Intellectual Figures Influencing the Arab Region and Germany,” which develops AI-based digital twins of selected historical intellectual figures as educational tools and formats for knowledge mediation in museums and public contexts. Beyond applied use cases, the project raises conceptual questions inspired by popular culture: to what extent can knowledge-based systems simulate “consciousness,” and what are the epistemological and ethical limits of such simulations?

Second, the talk outlines Amin’s Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral project “Who am I? A Cultural Exploration of the (Re/De)Construction of the Self across Media in the Age of AI,” which examines how individual and collective identities are constructed and negotiated across media. 

As AI increasingly participates in producing images, narratives, and representations of the self, the project interrogates where the boundaries lie between human self-reflection and algorithmic construction.

Third, the talk proposes concrete pathways for expanding collaboration between BaCAI and ZIAI and the humanities, including co-teaching formats, joint events, and interdisciplinary research initiatives. It argues that sustained interdisciplinary experimentation is essential for addressing complex AI-related questions and for building broader, more engaged academic communities across technical and humanistic fields.

Short Bio

Noran Amin is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at Cairo University and currently a postdoctoral researcher with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Department of Arabic Studies (Arabistik), Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg. Her work lies at the intersection of comics studies, comparative literature, cultural studies, and media criticism, with a focus on visual narratives, norm-critical pedagogy, and interdisciplinary approaches. She developed the Interrogative Mode, a framework for analyzing comics that foregrounds the aesthetic and multimodal dynamics of the medium. Her current research examines identity construction across media in the age of AI and explores interdisciplinary collaborations between the humanities and AI research.

The talk will take place at Gutenbergstraße 13 and online.