Coordinator

The digital history research group at UvA is an interdisciplinary initiative focusing on digital methods to explore, understand, explain and represent historical processes. It sets a knowledge exchange base and networking initiative with staff members interested in digital tools and methodologies for historical research. 

Research description

The Digital History research group explores state-of-the-art research in Digital History by reading and discussing papers, sharing findings of ongoing research, coordinating seminars by inviting speakers, and organizing workshops to learn and/or improve digital skills. Every month, the group invites speakers working on different historical topics and periods. In addition, we organize meetings together with other ASH research groups and institutes such as KNAW Huygens.

Digital History can be characterized by three aspects:

• Use of digital sources (databasing / querying / digitization)
• Use of digital methods to explore, contextualise, and analyze digitized material (analysis)
• Use of digital means to present research to academic and public (presentation / visualization)

Projects in Digital History may drawn on different types of methods and theoretical paradigms to examine historical sources. Through interactions with other scholars, this group aims to spark creativity and foster collaborative exchange.

The topics of interest (based on an internal survey) include but are not limited to:

• Annotating historical material
• HTR
• Text Mining
• Programming (Python / R)
• ABM
• Visualization
• GIS
• Network analysis
• Databases