Eva Andersen

Some time ago it suddenly hit us that it has been a while since we read an academic book or article in a physical format. This for the simple reason that we can retrace digital information much quicker — i.e. annotating a PDF, extracting highlighted text automatically with ZotFile or quickly looking up a specific word in a pdf document. A second realisation was that as PhD students in the field of digital history and hermeneutics these "small" digital aspects of a scholars life are almost never highlighted.

Benoît Majerus and Anne Roekens (Université Catholique de Louvain) have edited a special issue ‘Histories of Psychiatry’ of the Journal of Belgian History. The issue contains five articles exploring different research trends. Two of these contributions were by members of the C²DH: Benoît Majerus and Eva Andersen.

In the Hands-On History seminar on the 24th of May by Dr. Ludwig M. Vogl-Bienek and Karin Bienek from the University of Trier we were introduced to the history of the magic lantern. After a brief overview during the lecture, we got to experience a live performance of the magic lantern in our Digital History lab. We were also encouraged to experiment with some smaller but original magic lanterns.

In recent years the buzzword in historical research has been "transnational history". Although over the past 15 years some historians have begun to integrate this perspective into the history of medicine and psychiatry, especially with respect to colonial history, this research area remains underdeveloped. It goes without saying that there have been transnational contacts and transfers of knowledge in the psychiatric field - translations of books, international conferences, correspondence, memberships in associations, international travel - but research on these processes remains rare. This raises the urgent question of how to approach research on psychiatric history with a transnational framework in mind.

In this post, I want to reflect on some of the presentations I was attending during the workshop organised by the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities.

The aim of this summer school, organized by the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, was to provide answers to specific needs and challenges emerging from projects conducted by researchers working in the field of history, archeology and literature. The basic idea of the organizers was to render a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment with the motto “Tailored to what you need”.

In the 2017 edition of the conference, arts and humanities students and early career researchers, regardless of their technical background, were invited to share their ideas and experiences in their creative and scientific encounters with visualisation as it is deployed in and for research across disciplines.

In the last decade, the use of ‘all things digital’ has taken flight in historical studies, supporting new research with digital tools and platforms. But we also have to recognise the limitations when it comes to digitising, accessing and using digitised material.