Launched in October 2021, the Digital Archive of the Middle East (DAME) is a three-year research project undertaken as a collaboration between The Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies (IAIS) at the University of Exeter and the Institute for International and Area Studies (IIAS) at Tsinghua University, building upon the 2019 Memorandum of Understanding established between the two institutions. By using new technologies to digitise selected parts of the University’s collections of material from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the project aims to open up a series of research questions about the potential for digitisation in advancing research.