Today, 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 University of Lausanne and infoclio.ch are pleased to announce that a Digital History Summer School will take place at the University of Lausanne, from the 20th to the 23rd of June 2017. 

Why Organize a Digital History Summer School?

Today, 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 its last day, the Summer School will host a so-called "datasprint"–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. In our case, the datasprint 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.  

With the support of Unidistance (http://unidistance.ch/), LabEx Ecrire une Histoire Nouvelle de l’Europe (http://labex-ehne.fr/) and the association Histoire & Informatique / Geschichte & Informatik (http://blog.ahc-ch.ch/).

Speakers

Frédéric Clavert | Marten Düring | Martin Grandjean | Tobias Hodel | Elena Pierazzo | Valérie Schafer | Sean Takats | Jane Winters | Aris Xanthos

Preliminary program

20.06.2017 – Day 1. Primary sources

8h30-9h00 – Registration

9h00-9h30 – Introduction

• 9h30-11h00 – First lecture: Introduction to Digital History (Jane Winters Sean Takats)

11h00-11h30 – Pause

• 11h30-13h00 – Second lecture: From primary sources to data (Frédéric Clavert Sean Takats)

13h00-14h00 – Lunch

• 14h00-15h30 – Workshop: Creating your own primary sources corpus

15h30-16h00 – Coffee

• 16h00-17h30 – Introduction to the Datasprint
• 17h30–18h – Project Slam

21.06.2017 – Day 2. Text mining

8h30 – Registration

• 9h30-11h00 – Third lecture: Web archive (Valérie Schafer) OR Digitized sources (Elena Pierazzo)

11h00-11h30 – Pause

• 11h30-13h00 – Workshop: Born digital sources OR Digitized sources

13h00-14h00 – Lunch

Tour. (To be defined)

22.06.2017 – Day 3. Data visualization

8h30 – Registration:

• 9h30-11h00 – Fourth lecture: Text mining (Aris Xanthos)

11h00-11h30 – Pause

• 11h30-13h00 – Workshop: Text mining

13h00-14h00 – Lunch

• 14h00-15h30 – Fifth lecture: Networks and visualization (Marten Düring, Martin Grandjean)

15h30-16h00 – Coffee

• 16h00-17h30 – Workshop: Data Visualization
• 17h30–18h – Datasprint

23.06.2017 – Day 4. Datasprint

8h30 – Registration

• 9h30-11h00 – Workshop (Second session of the week’s workshops)

11h00-11h30 – Pause

• 11h30-13h00 – Workshop: Datasprint

13h00-14h00 – Lunch

Datasprint

• 16h00-17h30 – Datasprint Slam

17h30–18h – Conclusion

How to register

Registration is now open. Please, go to http://www.dhsummerschool.ch/?page_id=762 and fulfill the form, including if you are candidate to get a stipend.

The selection of candidatures will be based on a “first come, first served" logic. For those asking for a grant, an ogranisation committee, made of members of the University of Lausanne, infoclio.ch and UniDistance, will assess stipend's files.

Fees

You are required to pay an inscription fee based on your academic level until May. The fees are:

• 75 CHF for UniDistance students,
• 90 CHF for master, PhD, and postddoc students,
• and 110 CHF for applicants with tenure.

Organizing Committee

• Jan Baumann (collaborateur scientifique, infoclio.ch)
• Frédéric Clavert (maître-assistant, Université de Lausanne)
• Isabelle Lucas (collaboratrice scientifique, infoclio.ch)
• Andy Maître (doctorant, Université de Fribourg)
• Enrico Natale (directeur, infoclio.ch)
• Amandine Oricheta (étudiante, Université de Lausanne)