20-23 June 2017, University of Lausanne
Historians are increasingly confronted with questions about the use of primary sources. How does one deal with historical primary sources in the Digital Age? What peculiarities present sources, which have been digitized, or which originated in digital form–so-called “born-digital” sources? How do we read them? How do we interpret them? How can they be used in order to construct a historical narrative?
This four-day Summer School offers historians (PhD-candidates, graduates students, established historians) the opportunity to acquire the basic principles of data usage in the historical sciences, and benefit from insights gained in other humanities and social sciences disciplines.
The first three days of the Summer School will alternate lectures and workshops. Courses will be held in plenary sessions, whereas workshops take place in smaller groups. Lectures will tackle crucial epistemological or theoretical problems, while workshops allow participants to learn technical skills by working hands-on with historical data on their own personal computer.
On the last day, the Summer School will host a so-called “data sprint”–a hackathon based on data. What is a hackathon, you ask? A hackathon is originally a gathering of developers organized by team around project bearers with the objective of producing a prototype application in a few hours. The data sprint will be an opportunity to put into practice the technical skills learned during the Summer School. Teams will choose a research topic, and then collaboratively collect data about it. They will then continue by interpreting the gathered data, and finally attempt to develop a historical narrative based on said data.
Registration is now open.
For more information about speakers and the provisional programme, please visit the website, or send a mail to Frederic.clavert@unil.ch.
With the support of Unidistance, LabEx Ecrire une Histoire Nouvelle de l’Europe, and the association Histoire & Informatique / Geschichte & Informatik.
Social media seminar