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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.

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