MennaAly at NakbaArchiveClassifier Shared Task: Transfer Learning with ResNet for Historical Image Classification

Menna Aly


Abstract
This paper describes our submission to the NakbaArchiveClassifier shared task at Nakba-NLP 2026, co-located with LREC 2026. The task consists of binary image classification, where a model must classify historical images into one of two categories: destruction or not_destruction. We adopt a transfer learning approach based on pretrained residual networks, fine-tuned on the provided training data. To mitigate class imbalance, we incorporate weighted cross-entropy loss during optimization. In the development phase, our ResNet18 model achieved a peak macro F1-score of 0.8137 on the validation set. For the final phase, we trained on the combined training and validation data (1,599 labeled images) and generated predictions for the hidden test set of 402 images. Our final submission achieved a macro F1-score of 0.83228 with an accuracy of 0.84577 on the official evaluation set. These results underscore the effectiveness of lightweight transfer learning approaches for historical image analysis under limited-data conditions, demonstrating that compact residual architectures can achieve competitive performance without complex architectural modifications.
Anthology ID:
2026.nakbanlp-1.33
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Nakba Narratives as Language Resources @ LREC 2026
Month:
May
Year:
2026
Address:
Palma, Mallorca (Spain)
Editors:
Mustafa Jarrar, Mo El-Haj, Amal Haddad, Serin Atiani, Shadi Abudalfa, Terry Regier, Paul Rayson, Khalil Sima’an, Camille Mansour
Venues:
NakbaNLP | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Note:
Pages:
226–228
Language:
External URL:
https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-ws-nakbanlp-33
DOI:
10.63317/26ohd3yrshim
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Menna Aly. 2026. MennaAly at NakbaArchiveClassifier Shared Task: Transfer Learning with ResNet for Historical Image Classification. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Nakba Narratives as Language Resources @ LREC 2026, pages 226–228, Palma, Mallorca (Spain). ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Cite (Informal):
MennaAly at NakbaArchiveClassifier Shared Task: Transfer Learning with ResNet for Historical Image Classification (Aly, NakbaNLP 2026)
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