Ian Marino – DH Lab

Data may be misleadingly considered an objective and impartial product. When doing historical research based on data (re)use, applying an ethical perspective becomes essential. Data is neither neutral or objective, nor are our practices for accessing, analyzing, and documenting it. Any discourse on the production of knowledge or on technology that creates and/or manipulates knowledge implies an ethical discourse and (un)conscious decisions. Ethics imply responsibility, as ignoring ethical issues or not taking action means, in many cases, perpetuating the existing biases and inequalities. The need for scholarly exchange in order to navigate the multifaceted and complex dimensions of research ethics was also reflected in the more than 200 registrations for the conference “Data Ethics for Historical Research in a Digital Era”, about which we would like to share our thoughts in this blog post.¹

„Data ethics in historical research: Recognizing responsibility“ weiterlesen

Author contribution according to CReditT: Writing – original draft: Sofia Baroncini, Constanze Buyken, Fabian Cremer, Ian Kisil Marino, Sarah Oberbichler, Cindarella Petz, Elena Suárez Cronauer, Thorsten Wübbena. [↩]

by Ian Kisil Marino

There is a dimension of historians’ work that is often overlooked when considering the nature of our profession: the archive. This reference is not to the traditional concept of the archive as merely the location where historians search for historical sources, but rather to the creation of archives. Today’s digital transformation is shaping the archives that future historians will explore. When observing a critical event of the present time, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine (2022-), it becomes evident that many actors are actively involved in documenting and archiving events of their current times – including historians. The various ways in which these archives take shape are critical to understanding what kinds of histories will be possible to write based on such digital resources. The project “LivArch – Documenting Russia’s War Against Ukraine: The Challenges of Living Archives for Historical Knowledge Production” aims to explore such questions, delving into the impacts of transformation on archival practices and, simultaneously, providing an assessment of the current state of the art in emergency digital preservation. But before introducing the project, I propose to reflect a bit more on the relationship between historians and archives, which has been fundamental to our discipline since its consolidation. „Historians and the archives of today: the LivArch project and the process of documenting the war in Ukraine“ weiterlesen