Interview with Elaine Lai and Aftab Hafeez: Exploring Digital Humanities Projects in Buddhist Studies

Below is an interview our Center Manager, Eren Yurek, conducted with Elaine Lai (current COLLEGE Lecturer, 2024 CESTA DH Research Fellow, and a PhD graduate of Stanford's Religious Studies Department) and her collaborator, Aftab Hafeez, (Head of Spatial Audio UX research at Google) on their digital humanities projects on Buddhist Studies.

Eren Yurek: Today, we're joined by Elaine Lai and Aftab Hafeez, two remarkable affiliates of CESTA. Elaine was a DH fellow last year and has spearheaded two incredible digital projects, among many other exciting ideas. Thank you both for making time to speak with us today. My questions will largely focus on digital humanities, but feel free to bring in broader connections between technology and humanities as you see fit. To begin, could you share how you first became interested in digital humanities? Was there a particular experience, project, or course that sparked your interest?

Elaine Lai: For me, it started during my PhD research in Buddhist studies. I was analyzing how a specific religious text was being quoted across a tradition it had influenced. Initially, I was doing these intertextual searches manually, but I quickly realized how inefficient that was. I knew digital tools existed—or should exist—that could make this process more reliable and accessible. That realization of the limitations of traditional methods led me to digital humanities.

Aftab Hafeez: My involvement came through Elaine. She introduced me to Tibetan Buddhism and later asked me to help her develop what we called the "heat map" project. The project especially caught my interest because I have had a life-long interest in creating better communication systems, which initially manifested in my music composition, and later in developing technology. Eventually, Elaine and I also worked on a VR project together. Both projects offered a fascinating way to dive deeper into the field of Tibetan Buddhism while applying digital tools.

Eren Yurek: Elaine, you mentioned reliability and accessibility as important to your projects. Could you elaborate on how you envisioned and implemented these, and why they were significant?

Elaine Lai: For the heat map project, which I developed as a DH fellow, I had already been informally mapping intertextuality in my research. But it was chaotic—no one, not even I, could trace the connections easily. I realized I needed a digital tool to simplify and display these findings in a structured way. Accessibility was crucial because much of Buddhist studies—and the specific materials I was analyzing—is largely unknown or inaccessible to wider audiences. Humanities research often stays confined to academic texts, so I wanted to share my findings in a format that could reach a broader audience.

Digital tools allowed me to convey these complex ideas in a way that traditional text-heavy methods couldn’t. The heat map became an interactive way to explore intertextual relationships, opening the door for people who don’t read Tibetan or aren’t part of this niche field to engage with the material.

Eren Yurek: How has your field responded to these projects?

Elaine Lai: There were two main instances of reception. First, my dissertation committee saw the heat map as a "tour de force" of my project. They also appreciated the VR component, even though it wasn’t part of the dissertation itself. They felt these tools could offer novel ways to share textual sources and translations in a digital format that allows for intertextual tracing and comparison.

Second, at the International Seminar for Young Tibetologists at Oxford, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Scholars from various fields saw the potential of the heat map for their own textual research. Many asked if we could develop a more general tool that they could use. It was gratifying to see how applicable the tool was across different areas of humanities research.

Eren Yurek: Let’s shift to the VR project. What inspired you to create it?

Elaine Lai: Chapter two of my dissertation focused on lineage histories in Buddhism—teacher-student relationships spanning generations. These histories are complex in both content and concept. The representation of time in Buddhist tradition isn’t linear, so I wanted to explore how to spatially represent these relationships beyond a traditional, left-to-right textual description.

Aftab introduced me to the capabilities of VR, and it struck me as the perfect medium for this project. It allowed us to create a dynamic, visual representation of lineage histories, making the complex relationships and their unique conception of time more accessible.

Aftab Hafeez: When Elaine first described the lineage tree, it reminded me of the concept of version control in software development, which inspired part of our design. We started with basic diagrams and spent a lot of time figuring out what variables to represent and how to structure the relationships. The lineage histories were unique because they included different modes of teaching—natural language, symbolic language, and mind-to-mind transmission—and entities existing outside of time. Representing all that in VR was a challenge, but also a rewarding experience.

Eren Yurek: Did you draw inspiration from existing models when designing the VR project, or was it built entirely from scratch?

Elaine Lai: We took some inspiration from Tibetan Buddhist thangka paintings, which depict lineage trees, but our project was much more complex. There were more entities and variables to consider. We used color coding to represent different modes of transmission and time-exempt entities, and we deliberately moved away from linear depictions to capture the non-linear aspects of Buddhist history.

Aftab Hafeez: While brainstorming, I drew a parallel to Git version control systems. It helped us conceptualize how to manage overlapping histories and differing versions of the same lineage story. Though we didn’t fully implement that model, it was a helpful starting point for thinking about structure.

Eren Yurek: What were some challenges you faced while developing these projects?

Elaine Lai: For the heat map, a major challenge was building everything from scratch. The texts I used were OCR’d from the Buddhist Digital Resource Center, but they required extensive cleaning. We also had to devise workflows for mapping intertextuality without existing tools, which meant manually coding matches into CSV files. Collaboration with our technical advisor, Simon Wiles, was key in overcoming these hurdles.

Aftab Hafeez: In the VR project, challenges came from evolving requirements. For instance, changes to the lineage tree’s structure midway through development meant reworking significant parts of the app. Also, since we were creating a completely novel VR experience—mapping a complex relationship hierarchy without a pre-existing template—it required a lot of trial and error.

Eren Yurek: Looking ahead, are there specific tools, techniques, or collaborations you’re excited to explore?

Elaine Lai: I’d love to develop a generalized version of the heat map tool that allows researchers to upload their own texts and generate intertextual analyses. I’m also considering other VR projects, such as simulating the Buddhist stages of death or creating a heritage site visualization that spans different historical periods. These ideas require collaboration, funding, and technical expertise, but they’re exciting possibilities.

Aftab Hafeez: There’s also a need for better tools for under-resourced languages like Tibetan. Effective machine translation for Tibetan doesn’t yet exist, which limits what we can do. Solving that would open up many possibilities for future projects.

Eren Yurek: Thank you both for sharing your insights. Your projects exemplify the innovative potential of digital humanities, and I can’t wait to see what you’ll accomplish next.

Elaine Lai and Aftab Hafeez: Thank you! It’s been a pleasure.

Elaine Lai is a Lecturer for Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) who has spent over a decade of her life working and studying in Nepal, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, and China, where she made many lifelong friends. Elaine obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies from Stanford University in 2024 with a specialty in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. She specializes in a tradition known as the Great Perfection in Tibet. Elaine’s recent research explores the relationship between Buddhist literature and time, specifically, how form and content interplay to cultivate more compassionate temporal relationalities. Elaine is committed to making the study of Buddhism accessible to a wider audience through technology and the arts. As a part of her dissertation, she created an intertextual heatmap to trace the citational history of a scripture throughout an important corpus of Great Perfection literature. Elaine also created a virtual reality (VR) experience to present Great Perfection history in a novel way.

At Google, Aftab Hafeez heads spatial audio UX research for virtual and mixed reality, innovating spatial audio features as well as designing and engineering immersive VR/AR experiences. Beyond his role at Google, Aftab is a versatile composer and sound designer in the realms of film, media, and technology. His portfolio spans producing and mixing instrumentals for GRAMMY-winning artists, scoring diverse genres of original soundtracks for award-winning films, and shaping the audio experience for widely-used devices. Aftab is passionate about leveraging VR/AR and audio technology systems for communication, particularly for individuals who are similarly on the autism spectrum.

Links

Link to Heatmap of the Tantra of the Sun Through Time: https://heatmap.elainejlai.com/ 

Link to YouTube tutorial of how to use the Heatmap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_aTQPFMthI 

Blog post on the Digital Orientalist about the Heatmap project: https://digitalorientalist.com/2024/11/05/an-intertextual-heatmap-tantra-of-the-suns-reception-in-14th-century-tibet/

Presentation of the VR experience at the 2024 Immersive Technology and Cultural Heritage (ITCH) Symposium at USC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7_oQAcNt40