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Bewahrende Erneuerung: Europäische Friedensverträge online

von Fabian Cremer und Thorsten Wübbena1

In der Geschichte Europas markieren die in Konflikten und Bündnissen geschlossenen Friedensverträge Grundpfeiler des heutigen Europas und gehören zum kulturellen Erbe. Die Forschung zu Friedensprozessen hat am IEG eine lange und vielfältige Tradition. Eine der wichtigsten Ressourcensammlung wurde jetzt neu aufgelegt: Die Datenbank und Online-Edition Europäische Friedensverträge der Vormoderne. An diesem Vorhaben kristallisieren sich viele Entwicklungen in den Digital Humanities der letzten zehn Jahre: Forschungsdaten, nachhaltige Infrastrukturen, digitale Editionsstandards, und der Umgang mit einem digitalen kulturellen Erbe. „Bewahrende Erneuerung: Europäische Friedensverträge online“ weiterlesen

  1. According to the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT), the shares in this contribution are as follows: Fabian Cremer (Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing), Thorsten Wübbena (Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing). []

History as a Weapon: Historical Revisionism as a Tool of Russian Psychological Aggression in Social Media

by Olesia Zvezdova

Is it possible to change the past? Not in the sense of speculative fiction, nor as an attempt to correct individual mistakes, but as a strategy aimed at securing advantage in large-scale geopolitical competition. To what extent can collective memory of historical events be instrumentalized as a weapon against political adversaries? Is it possible to rewrite the pages of history textbooks and shape a new generation that will sincerely believe in a newly constructed truth? These questions have repeatedly arisen in my research on the key mechanisms of psychological influence employed by the Russian Federation, both with regard to its domestic population and to audiences in European countries. Among the dominant narratives disseminated through Russian and pro-Russian media channels, the manipulation of historical events and historical figures occupies a central place. Therefore, during my fellowship at the IEG DH Lab, I focused my research on historical revisionism in social media as a method of Russian psychological aggression.
„History as a Weapon: Historical Revisionism as a Tool of Russian Psychological Aggression in Social Media“ weiterlesen

Sites of Memory VS Cultural Heritage: Urban Violence in Collective Narratives of Odesa Residents in Wartime

by Iuliia Iashchenko

Part I. The Why and The How: Practices of Documenting Urban Violence on Odesa City

The ongoing war in Ukraine has demonstrated with particular clarity that cultural heritage and urban life are not peripheral but central targets in contemporary armed conflict. Since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, systematic attacks have affected not only military infrastructure but also schools, cultural institutions, and historically significant sites. According to international monitoring frameworks, including those of UNESCO, thousands of cultural heritage locations and urban infrastructures have been damaged or destroyed. Among the most emblematic cases in Odesa is the severe damage inflicted on the Transfiguration Cathedral, alongside numerous other historically and socially significant sites.

These developments highlight an urgent need to rethink both the preservation of cultural heritage and the documentation of lived experience during wartime. „Sites of Memory VS Cultural Heritage: Urban Violence in Collective Narratives of Odesa Residents in Wartime“ weiterlesen

“The last one leaves the light on”. Static service as a key to sustainable data provision

by Moritz Schepp and Thorsten Wübbena

The headline “Everything dies, including information”, published 2022 in MIT Technology Review, still resonates today. The article states that almost every project-based third-party funded project must store its data somewhere permanently, “but there are no overarching requirements about who must store the data or how long it must be saved.” While robust solutions exist for static data publications, the challenge of sustainability still applies to living systems, such as databases developed in our DH projects. And as Huculak and Davis (2024) so simply and accurately described: “Databases need periodic upgrading, which can break entire applications.” Consequently, one principle from the “Endings Principles for Digital Longevity” is: “No dependence on server-side software: build a static website with no databases, no PHP, no Python.” Yet, principles often falter when confronted with the realities of project implementation — and justifiably so. DH research often requires active, dynamic databases to function effectively. We feel that projects should have access to the best of both worlds here. In advancing our database system “ConedaKOR”, we reconciled the functions of a living database during the project period with a minimal computing approach and a “static version” for the long-term provision.

„“The last one leaves the light on”. Static service as a key to sustainable data provision“ weiterlesen

Transforming historical street names into FAIR research data

by Orysia Vira, Ukrainian Catholic University

Street names are more than simple labels on a map ‒ they are historical documents that record the life of a city. When a street name changes abruptly or when two names coexist for the same place, these shifts reveal stories about the people who lived there and transformations that cities underwent over centuries. In medieval and early modern Lviv, a multiethnic trading hub in what is now western Ukraine, street names were recorded in Latin, German, and later Polish, reflecting the linguistic landscape of a city where Armenian merchants, Jewish craftsmen, Polish burghers, and Ruthenian communities and smaller groups representing other nations and ethnic communities (Greeks, Italians, Scots, and Welsh etc.) negotiated shared urban space.

For nearly a decade, I collected street names from Lviv’s medieval and early modern tax registers and council records, creating a database of street names covered 1382-1768 years. The data was there, carefully transcribed and analysed as part of my PhD research on the historical urbanonymy of Lviv. But how could I make this research not just accessible, but truly reusable? How could I transform years of archival work into a resource that other scholars could discover and access?

„Transforming historical street names into FAIR research data“ weiterlesen

Rethinking Libraries in the Age of AI: Impressions and Takeaways from TPDL 2025

This year, the 29th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2025) took place in Tampere, Finland, from September 23–26. I attended the conference together with Sarah Oberbichler from the DH Lab to present our joint paper, “Studying Model Design Biases in LLMs for Multilingual Historical Newspaper Extraction; The Messina Earthquake Case Study”, in which we propose an explainability-driven framework to detect and analyze biases in large language models used for multilingual historical newspaper article extraction.

Focusing on the conference’s many LLM-related contributions, this blog post explores how digital libraries are evolving under the continuous advancement of AI and what digital humanities can contribute to the field. „Rethinking Libraries in the Age of AI: Impressions and Takeaways from TPDL 2025“ weiterlesen

Learning about history in a digital world. “The Digital Logbook” as a research project and educational resource

Historical learning processes are omnipresent. They affect all age groups, forms of media, and are encouraged in both formal and non-formal education. But how do we learn to internalize and classify historical knowledge, to evaluate and contextualize it? And how can this be supported in the face of a digitalizing society facing tendencies of increasing political radicalization? My research project attempts to find answers and propose solutions to encourage data literacy and historical thinking by creating the learning platform “The Digital Logbook” and reflecting on its implications. „Learning about history in a digital world. “The Digital Logbook” as a research project and educational resource“ weiterlesen

From “so what?” to “what’s next?”: Joining the C²DH in Luxembourg as Visiting Researcher

by Sarah Oberbichler

There are critics who sometimes ask the “so what?” question when it comes to Digital History: what impact can these new methods and approaches make on historical arguments and how can they advance scholarship? Do they advance scholarship at all? To be fair, sometimes this critique is justified.

The “so what?” question  has long been part of the C²DH Centre’s critical approach to digital history.

I have always admired how the C²DH Centre in Luxembourg approaches this very question. Rather than dismissing the critique, they’ve made it central to their philosophy. What makes the Centre so compelling is how they address it: they recognize that digital historians are foremost historians who face the same fundamental challenges—working with complex, incomplete, messy sources full of biases and errors, then interpreting them critically to develop arguments. But digital sources add new layers of complexity: digitization processes, algorithmic biases, complex tools. This is where new skills need to be learned (digital literacy and competence), where collaboration becomes essential, and where experimentation is key.

The C²DH Centre is a place where failure is part of success.

„From “so what?” to “what’s next?”: Joining the C²DH in Luxembourg as Visiting Researcher“ weiterlesen

Forgeries and Networks (ForNet): data transformations

by Jaap Geraerts, Henry Keazor, Demival Vasques Filho, Rebecca Welkens and Thorsten Wübbena

“Members are obliged to keep the Association’s printed matter carefully and secretly. They also undertake to return all printed matter to the Executive Board if they leave the Association and to ensure that the printed matter is returned to the Executive Board in the event of their death.”1

This clear call for secrecy and discretion can be found as a kind of prologue in issues of the so-called ‘Mittheilungen des Museen-Verbandes’, which were published from 1899 to 1939.2 They were distributed by the “International Association of Museum Officials in Defence Against Counterfeiting and Improper Trade Practices” (“Internationaler Verband von Museumsbeamten zur Abwehr von Fälschungen und unlauterem Geschäftsgebaren”). The project “Forgeries and Networks (ForNet) – The Mittheilungen des Museen-Verbandes and forgery networks in the 20th century”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), will use this valuable source to reconstruct, visualise and analyse the networks of relationships and the strategies of the actors involved at the time as well as the routes taken by the forgeries and ensure that the data compiled in the project is made available to the public. This blog post, highlights the creation of the dataset, its transformations and ingest in a graph database, and the creation of networks, as a step towards answering the project’s research questions. „Forgeries and Networks (ForNet): data transformations“ weiterlesen

  1. The original text reads as follows: “[…] sind die Mitglieder verpflichtet, die Drucksachen des Verbandes sorgfältig und geheim aufzubewahren. Sie verpflichten sich ferner, im Falle ihres Ausscheidens aus dem Verband die sämtlichen Drucksachen an den Vorort zurückzugeben, sowie dafür Sorge zu tragen, daß im Falle ihres Todes die Drucksachen an den Vorort zurückgegeben werden.”, example: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.35249#0070 []
  2. Available as a digital copy at Heidelberg University Library, https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.33011, based on the collection held in the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/kunstbibliothek/home/ []

Talking About Muslims in Middle French: The Potential of Word-to-Vector Models for Studying Semantic Relationships in Medieval Languages

by Kimberly Lifton

Medieval vernaculars are notoriously tricky for digital humanists to work with because they lack standardized spelling. Especially when using out-of-the-box libraries and software, most Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques simply do not work well for medieval languages. However, word-to-vector models have the capacity to handle noise like spelling variants when trained on a significant number of words. As part of my PhD project, which examines the representations of Muslims in textual sources during the rise of the Ottomans in the fifteenth century, I have created custom word-to-vector models using Middle French texts. These models capture the constellations of Muslim representations in Middle French texts at the word level. My methodology considers the exploratory potential of word-to-vector models for shaping research questions in a process that Gabor Mihaly Toth has aptly described as “semantic wanderings.”1
„Talking About Muslims in Middle French: The Potential of Word-to-Vector Models for Studying Semantic Relationships in Medieval Languages“ weiterlesen

  1. Gabor Mihaly Toth, “Women in Early Modern Handwritten News: Random Walks and Semantic Wandering in the Medici Archive,” Journal of Digital History 3.2 (2024). https://journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/article/jnkqqTTKW8km []

Europe Goes on Holiday: Potenziale und Herausforderungen der Aufbereitung von Daten über den Beitrag des Europäischen Parlaments zur gemeinsamen Tourismuspolitik

von Elisa Tizzoni

Kann eine schlichte Arbeitstabelle Interesse für ein bisher vernachlässigtes Thema in der europäischen Geschichte auslösen? Und kann ein Blick auf die Dokumentation des EU-Parlaments Überlegungen über die Rolle des Tourismus in unserer Gesellschaft und seine Auswirkungen auf die europäische Integration anregen?

Das sind die Herausforderungen, die ich mir gestellt habe, als ich mich um ein NFDI4Memory FAIR Data Fellowship am Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte beworben habe, um Unterstützung bei der Aufbereitung und Veröffentlichung eines Datensatzes zu erhalten, das die vom Europäischen Parlament zum Thema Tourismus im Zeitraum 1979-1999 vorgelegten Anfragen erfasst. „Europe Goes on Holiday: Potenziale und Herausforderungen der Aufbereitung von Daten über den Beitrag des Europäischen Parlaments zur gemeinsamen Tourismuspolitik“ weiterlesen

Borders, Data and Vassals – a Postdoc-Fellowship at the DH Lab

The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named. – Gregory Bateson1

Our spatial perception of the world in which we live is undoubtedly shaped significantly by maps. Political maps, which are frequently used, convey the size and political unity of territories through colored polygons and borders. They are deeply ingrained in our collective memory. Only rarely are we unsettled in this established knowledge by alternative representation methods that encourage new perspectives on the world. The choice of the base map alone is already a significant decision with immediate visual and thus cognitive consequences: the projection of a three-dimensional sphere onto a two-dimensional surface is by no means trivial, and aside from the commonly encountered versions, numerous alternatives exist, each with their advantages and disadvantages. „Borders, Data and Vassals – a Postdoc-Fellowship at the DH Lab“ weiterlesen

  1. Gregory Bateson: Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York 1979, p. 30 []

LLM Biases: Expected and Unexpected Model Design Effects in Historical Newspaper Article Extraction on the Messina Earthquake

by Johanna Mauermann and Sarah Oberbichler

When it comes to analysing large collections of historical documents – like digitized historical newspapers – language models are incredibly powerful tools. But as these technologies become more common in humanities research, scholars also need to think critically about how they use them.

One big question researchers face when using language models for their analysis is about bias. Described by Rob Kitchin in his book „Critical Data Science,“ bias can be understood as „a consistent pattern of error within a dataset, or within a method of data processing and analysis, that skews findings and interpretation“ (Kitchin, 2024). Biases manifest in AI models on various levels: in the model design, in the data itself, in its application to contexts the model wasn’t trained for, and in the prompts themselves (compare e.g., Ferrer et al., 2021). Addressing bias questions therefore is crucial for ensuring our historical research stands up to scrutiny and Good Scientific Practice demands that we take these challenges seriously. „LLM Biases: Expected and Unexpected Model Design Effects in Historical Newspaper Article Extraction on the Messina Earthquake“ weiterlesen

Durch Projektkoordination Räume der Zusammenarbeit schaffen: Erfahrungen aus der „Digitalen Kartenwerkstatt Altes Reich“ (DigiKAR)

Ein Rückblick auf drei Jahre „Digitale Kartenwerkstatt Altes Reich“ (DigiKAR) zeigt, dass die Zusammenarbeit verschiedener Disziplinen neue Zugänge zu historischen Fragestellungen ermöglicht und innovative Forschung schafft. Zugleich ist das Projekt ein gutes Beispiel dafür, wie die Arbeit in interdisziplinären Teams in DH-Projekten eine wertvolle Kultur der Kollaboration befördert, die von Teamgeist, Transparenz von Forschungsprozessen und Mut zum Experimentieren geprägt ist. Auch wenn die Verständigung zwischen verschiedenen Fächern herausfordernd ist, sind die Lerneffekte und die Bereicherung der eigenen Perspektive durch den Austausch und das gemeinsame Arbeiten immens. In meinem Beitrag möchte ich anhand von ausgewählten Aspekten vermitteln, wie die Projektkoordination hierzu beitragen kann und diese Erfahrungen aus DigiKAR als Diskussionsansatz und Anregungen für andere interdisziplinäre Projektteams teilen. „Durch Projektkoordination Räume der Zusammenarbeit schaffen: Erfahrungen aus der „Digitalen Kartenwerkstatt Altes Reich“ (DigiKAR)“ weiterlesen

Minderheitengeschichten digital: Über den Versuch, prosopografische Daten zu nicht-weißen Menschen im Hamburger Raum aufzubereiten

von Annika Bärwald und Josefa Cassimo

Wie verwandelt man einen Datensatz voller heterogener prosopografischer Angaben in eine einfache, aber funktionale Datenbank, mit der andere Forschende weiterarbeiten können? Wie wird man in diesem Prozess historisch marginalisierten Personen gerecht, deren Lebenswege, Arbeitsverhältnisse und Mobilitätspfade meist nur fragmentarisch überliefert sind? Diese Fragen standen im Zentrum meines Versuchs, personenbezogene Forschungsdaten meines Dissertationsprojekts digital zugänglich zu machen, unterstützt durch das NFDI4Memory-Konsortium und das DH Lab des IEG Mainz. „Minderheitengeschichten digital: Über den Versuch, prosopografische Daten zu nicht-weißen Menschen im Hamburger Raum aufzubereiten“ weiterlesen