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Beiträge

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Lik Hang Tsui: Histories of Digital History in the Chinese World: Infrastructure, Method, and Its Discontents

Digital humanities in China has moved, in barely two decades, from a scattered “prehistory” of full-text databases and ad-hoc digitization to a self-conscious field with dedicated centers, journals, curricula, and increasingly grand infrastructural ambitions. This talk offers a critical account of that trajectory, organized around three interlocking problems: emergence, infrastructure, and discontent. Drawing on a body of work by myself and with collaborators tracing the paradigm’s arrival in the Greater China region, it first charts how humanistic inquiry became fused with computational method—largely through library and information science, historical GIS, and landmark database projects such as the China Biographical Database—and how this shaped the field’s distinctive contours.

„Lik Hang Tsui: Histories of Digital History in the Chinese World: Infrastructure, Method, and Its Discontents“ weiterlesen

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Torsten Hiltmann: (Re-)Defining Digital History. The Allographic as a Theory of the Digital and Its Consequences for History

Digital History has proven remarkably resistant to definition: it is usually characterised either by reference to whatever technologies happen to be current, or as a loose set of practices — while some scholars reject the very attempt at definition altogether. This talk takes the opposite route and proposes a definition derived from theory, one that places neither practices nor technologies at the centre of the field, but the digital itself as its unifying core.

„Torsten Hiltmann: (Re-)Defining Digital History. The Allographic as a Theory of the Digital and Its Consequences for History“ weiterlesen
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Fréderic Clavert & Caroline Muller: From Digital Humanities to History in the Digital Age: Reflecting on Discret Digital Practices

When we talk about history and digital technology, we often refer to a number of high-profile, large-scale projects centred on vast databases, distant reading, network visualisation, major infrastructure and digital methods that are sometimes claimed to be revolutionary. It is rare for the ‘digital turn’ in history to be analysed through the lens of the day-to-day work of most historians. 

„Fréderic Clavert & Caroline Muller: From Digital Humanities to History in the Digital Age: Reflecting on Discret Digital Practices“ weiterlesen

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Stefano Dall’Aglio: When Digital History Goes Public: Theory, Practice, Perspectives

This talk investigates the intersections between digital history and public history, two recent fields of historical research and teaching that are still conceived and put into practice in many different ways. If a digital history without a public dimension can undoubtedly exist, and public history does not necessarily include a digital approach, there is also a significant area of overlap between the two. Depending on our interpretation of which ‘the public’ is and which role it should play, the field called ‘digital and public history’ can take many different forms and encompass many different activities, methodologies, and research products.

„Stefano Dall’Aglio: When Digital History Goes Public: Theory, Practice, Perspectives“ weiterlesen

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Cosima Wagner, Jonas Müller-Laackman, Jana Mende, Till Grallert: Mind the Gap: Multilinguale historische Daten und ihre digitale Repräsentation

Obwohl Multilingualität und Multiscriptualität selbstverständlicher Teil von (geistes)wissenschaftlicher Praxis in Forschung, Lehre und Studium sind, sind digitale Wissenschaftsinfrastrukturen weiterhin vorrangig monolingual und auf die lateinische Schrift ausgerichtet. Auf diese Weise wird der digitale Raum auf Hegemonialsprachen und –schriften verengt und somit auch die Basis dessen mit der die Digital Humanities (DH) einschließlich der Digital History forschen und lehren können. Der Vortrag nimmt das Thema Multilingualität in den Infrastrukturen unserer vernetzten Wissensökologien für historische Daten in den Blick und fragt nach den diesbezüglichen digitalen Lücken („resourcedness gap“) sowie deren Auswirkungen auf die DH-Forschung und Lehre. Weiterhin werden Aktivitäten von Arbeitsgruppen wie der Multilingual DH AG im DHd Verband vorgestellt, in der die Vortragenden gemeinsam an der Adressierung und Änderung der Problemlage arbeiten. Schließlich soll im Dialog mit den Teilnehmenden über ein „Pflichtenheft“ für multilingual angepasst Wissenschaftsinfrastrukturen reflektiert werden. 

„Cosima Wagner, Jonas Müller-Laackman, Jana Mende, Till Grallert: Mind the Gap: Multilinguale historische Daten und ihre digitale Repräsentation“ weiterlesen

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Firmin Forster: Zwischen analogem Fotomaterial, antiken Papyri und großen Sprachmodellen – ein fotografischer Nachbericht zur DHd 2026 in Wien

Die Digital Humanities stehen in einem konstanten Zwiespalt. Sie bewegen sich zwischen der Verwendung modernster computergestützter Analysemethoden und jahrhunderte-, teils jahrtausendealten Untersuchungsmaterialien in verschiedenen medialen Konkretionen, die für eine Analyse erst ins Digitale übertragen werden müssen.

„Firmin Forster: Zwischen analogem Fotomaterial, antiken Papyri und großen Sprachmodellen – ein fotografischer Nachbericht zur DHd 2026 in Wien“ weiterlesen

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Luana Moraes Costa: Reflecting on the Cambridge Cultural Heritage Data School

From April 7 to 11, 2024, I had the privilege of attending the Cambridge Cultural Heritage Data School, an event that was both intellectually stimulating and deeply enriching. As an early career researcher funded by a grant from NFDI4Memory, this opportunity allowed me to immerse myself in the intersection of digital humanities, cultural heritage preservation, and critical reflection on the complexities of colonial and historical collections. The event was part of the Cambridge Digital Humanities program, and it provided an exploration of the methods and tools used to create, visualize, and analyze digital archives and collections.

„Luana Moraes Costa: Reflecting on the Cambridge Cultural Heritage Data School“ weiterlesen
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Adrian Wüthrich: Network Epistemology in Practice

I will provide an overview over the ERC-funded project Network Epistemology in Practice (NEPI). One of the project’s main objectives is to examine how theoretical results from “network epistemology” (Zollman 2007, Rosenstock, Bruner & O’Connor 2017) translate into the historical analysis of scientific practice: Do the possible effects actually occur? However, answering this question requires reliable data describing actual scientific practice in a way that makes the theoretical models applicable to that data. Attempts to apply the theoretical models to historical cases have remained controversial so far and suitable historical cases have reportedly been difficult to find. In NEPI, we propose that the way forward is to generate and collect suitable data from recent and ongoing activities of large research collaborations such as ATLAS at CERN, the particle-physics laboratory. In this way, born-digital sources take center stage – with all their advantages (amenability to computational analysis; density and detail) and their drawbacks (abundance, lack of established archival procedures and concerns about privacy and data protection). In the talk, I will report on how NEPI is progressing and discuss our methodological approach, initial results and difficulties ahead.

„Adrian Wüthrich: Network Epistemology in Practice“ weiterlesen

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Martin Schmitt: Karikaturen digitaler Umwelten: Computer-Natur-Beziehungen im Anthropozän mit Vision Language Models erforschen / Caricatures of Digital Environments: Exploring Computer-Nature Relationships in the Anthropocene Using Vision Language Models

Die Nutzung digitaler Methoden ist für eine Analyse digitaler Kulturen unerlässlich. In der Forschung standen hierbei bisher schriftliche Zeugnisse der Vergangenheit im Vordergrund, während bildliche eher vernachlässigt blieben. Dieser Beitrag präsentiert einen computergestützten Arbeitsablauf zur Analyse einfacher grafischer Formen mit digitalen Werkzeugen von der Quellenerfassung bis hin zur Auswertung. Hierzu werden Computerkarikaturen aus der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Spanien aus den 1970er- und 1980er-Jahren herangezogen, die Darstellungen von Natur und Umwelt. Dadurch soll das Verhältnis von Umwelt und Digitalisierung in der Epoche des Anthropozäns näher beleuchtet werden.

„Martin Schmitt: Karikaturen digitaler Umwelten: Computer-Natur-Beziehungen im Anthropozän mit Vision Language Models erforschen / Caricatures of Digital Environments: Exploring Computer-Nature Relationships in the Anthropocene Using Vision Language Models“ weiterlesen
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Zachary Loeb: What’s the worst that could have happened? Y2K and the Risks of the Information Age

“Now, this is not one of the summer movies where you can close your eyes during the scary parts,” is how President Clinton described the year 2000 computer problem (Y2K) in a speech before the National Academy of Sciences. And though his description was met with laughter, as President Clinton expounded on how Y2K “could affect electric power, phone service, air travel, major governmental services,” he made it clear that his administration did not view Y2K as a joke. With its origins in a cost-saving decision that meant computers might encounter problems processing dates once 1999 rolled over to 2000; President Clinton made clear that Y2K had the potential to cause problems for a range of computer connected systems, and by the waning years of the 20th century those computer connected systems were everywhere.

„Zachary Loeb: What’s the worst that could have happened? Y2K and the Risks of the Information Age“ weiterlesen