Digital history & historiography

In the course of the twentieth century, various generations have documented and materialized their family memories on film, video and digital media. But how have these changes in technologies of memory shaped new forms of recording and screening as family memory practices?

From 20th to 24th February, a winter school on “Skills in digital humanities” was organised at the University of Luxembourg, where the participants were introduced to the software Nodegoat and the development of databases. It was a possibility of tinkering with a digital tool that was completely new to me. In the following, I will give a personal account of my own experiences with Nodegoat, and present a critical reflection on the problems I encountered and the use of digital tools.

We are pleased to announce the Inaugural Issue of the Journal of Historical Network Research, a new publication dedicated to historical research by means of theories and methodologies developed in social network analysis and network science.

histograph helps institutions reveal the manifold relations between their digital collections of texts, images, audio and video documents.

BLIZAAR project develops new visualization techniques for the exploration of multimedia document collections

During the workshop on digital source criticism that was held at the Humboldt University in Berlin on 23 June 2016, interesting reflections on the “digital turn” aroused.

A whole range of digital tools exists nowadays to help historians in their daily work, but how to choose the “perfect” one for your needs? Should you lose time searching for the holy Grail, or take the risk to try out and study tools that, in the end, might not fit your needs?

Darstellung von Handel, Händler und Transport von Textilien in Mitteleuropa (Gallien, Germanien, Rätien) zur Zeit des Römischen Kaiserreiches bis 301.

Pompeian wall paintings as a source of inspiration for neo-classical domestic interior decorations; a digital approach to art history.

From the 1940s on the computer starts playing a prominent role, shaping the field of physics. The integration of the computer in this discipline was by no means a natural inclusion, but a process of debate and negotiation of what it meant to “do” physics and what kind of knowledge can be acquired using computers.

Data are not the same as sources and datasets need rigidly defined categories of information which does not allow for deviation and reinforces binary oppositions such as male and female.

The challenge of leading a workshop with the goal of bringing scholars together and teach them how to apply a number of basic digital tools on a dataset of military memoires.

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.

This research examines differences in identity formation among generations of Czech, Slovak, French and Luxembourgish Jews who grew up either under communism or in liberal Western Europe. By gathering data, the aim is to create an international virtual library and cloud storage not only for professional educators, but also for the public. My focus is on the differences and similarities within and between generations, and on the changing historical and political circumstances of both state communism and established liberal democracy that have shaped individuals’ consciousness and identity.