Data

The rise of public history is the result of an unfolding technological-epistemological transformation. Gradual changes in media technologies, historiography, museology and museography until well into the 1970s can be considered as a pre-history of public history. During the last third of the twentieth century the rise of memory and related historiographical changes went hand in hand with an increased influence of analogue and digital media that impacted communication, documentation and preservation.

The online exhibition “Minett Stories” (https://minett-stories.lu) tells the history of the Minett, the industrial region in the south of Luxembourg. Instead of telling the history of mining and smelting technologies, large iron works and steel barons, the project team decided to present the everyday history of an industrial region, focusing on the time span from the industrialization of the region in around 1870 to the steel crisis of the 1970s.

La période d’occupation française des territoires qui composent l’actuelle Belgique est souvent associée à un bref intermède entre le régime autrichien et le régime hollandais, débouchant sur l’Indépendance belge de 1830. Pourtant, durant la courte période allant de 1795 à 1815 s’est déroulé le plus grand et le plus radical chamboulement de l’histoire de ces régions. Chamboulement culturel, économique, et, non des moindres, administratif. À ce niveau, le nouveau découpage du territoire est sans doute l’élément le plus flagrant.

„Minett Stories“ (https://minett-stories.lu) erzählt für ein breites Publikum die Geschichte des Minetts, der Industrieregion im Süden Luxemburgs. Sie stellt nicht die Entwicklung der Bergbau- und Hüttentechnik, der großen Hüttenwerke und Stahlbarone in den Mittelpunkt, sondern die Alltagsgeschichte einer Industrieregion. Die Online-Ausstellung wurde im Mai 2022 im Rahmen der Europäischen Kulturhauptstadt Esch2022 der Öffentlichkeit vorgestellt. Der Vortrag beschreibt die Entwicklung und Umsetzung des Ausstellungskonzepts.

Digital humanities has a critical role in the progress of the data visualisation field. First, humanities scholars engage with the concept of knowledge as interpretation. Second, they leverage computational tools and statistical methods to analyse and visualise data and metadata. Finally, Digital Humanities projects are a space for experimentation where different epistemic cultures (which often go beyond the Humanities and Computer Science) negotiate new forms of knowledge.

This poster delves into the intricate interplay between global expectations for research in contemporary history, the evolving landscape of digital curation, the imperative for efficient research data management, the creation of a well-structured and effective plan for digital infrastructure by emphasizing the significance of developing a comprehensive framework for the analysis and interpretation of contemporary history.

The standardization of repair work has often been discussed by manufacturers and large infrastructure companies to reduce repair costs but also to control and discipline repair workers. However, in cases like Ford and Volkswagen these efforts failed or did not meet the manufacturers’ or customers’ expectations (McIntyre 2000; Krebs 2014). This paper will zoom in on the people who repaired the telephone system in Luxembourg.

Guest editors Johanna Jaschik, Machteld Venken, and Birte Wassenberg bring time into border studies with this new collection, Border Temporalities in and Beyond Europe, featuring 12 research articles. The new issue also includes a portfolio, poetry, policy work, and more!

The history of repair of consumer objects in the post-war period is usually told as a story of decline. However, the “Histories of Maintenance and Repair in Luxembourg” project has revealed that official statistics on the development of small repair shops show a general stagnation and reorganisation of the Luxembourg repair sector, from mending shoes and clothes to fixing electrical devices and cars, but no general decline of the field. This is also confirmed by a close investigation of family budgets.