070323 PS BA-Proseminar - Public History - Introduction to Digital (Public) History (2023W)

Digital revolution in the humanities and social sciences has opened new possibilities for research on human societies, culture and history on a much larger scale. Large and openly available digital collections of different types of data, ranging from texts, music, and films, to artefacts in museum collections, historical documents, and archaeological records have made historical archives more accessible to the researchers and opened new possibilities for dissemination. The development of new computational tools and mathematical models or adaptation of methods from natural sciences has enabled historians to tackle some long-standing questions in a novel way and inspired them to ask new ones. Digitization and the rise of digital and social media has also transformed the research and practice of public history, opening new possibilities for interaction and collaboration between the professionals and the public. However, although new digital power has helped to make research faster, cheaper, and in many cases more accurate, supported transdisciplinary collaboration and made history more available to the public, it has also brought new challenges and opened discussions on relevance, limits, and ethics of digital history.

Over the course of this proseminar, the students will be introduced to a variety of digital approaches in academic and public history, from data management and analysis to dissemination and education. We will discuss the opportunities and challenges of digitized historical archives, the use of visualisations and computational models in historical research, and central issues in digital public history, from collaborative platforms enabling public participation in history making, and technological advances that enabled new immersive and engaging representations of the past. The discussions will be based on the assigned reading of relevant scientific articles and book chapters.

In order to prepare for the discussions, students will be required to write weekly short reports analysing the methodological approaches and theoretical background of the texts and comment on their relevance to broader questions in historical research. These reports will be read, reviewed and discussed in small groups. The combination of weekly written assignments in the form of critical analysis of scientific articles, active contribution to group and plenary discussions, and peer-review exercises will allow attendees to actively engage with the texts and current debates as well as to develop their writing and presentation skills.