dhnord2017 is the fourth edition of the annual Digital Humanities conference organized by the Maison européenne des sciences de l'homme et de la société (MESHS). This year's edition is co-organized with the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) of the University of Luxembourg. The theme is: “(De)constructing Digital History”. The conference will take place in November 27-29, 2017 in Lille, France.

dhnord2017 is the fourth edition of the annual Digital Humanities conference organized by the Maison européenne des sciences de l'homme et de la société (MESHS). This year's edition is co-organized with the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) of the University of Luxembourg. The theme is: "(De)constructing Digital History". The conference will take place in November 27-29, 2017 in Lille, France. 

Argument

What is digital history? The term has been coined since at least 1999 (Ayers, 1999) and was further generalized by 2005 (Lines Andersen 2002, Lee 2002, Cohen & Rosenzweig 2005). Broadly defined, digital history is "an approach to examining and representing the past that works with the new communication technologies of the computer, the internet network, and software systems" (Seefeldt & Thomas 2009). In other words, it describes historical inquiry that is based on primary sources available as electronic data, whether digitized or born-digital, and the narratives that are constructed through such inquiries (Lee 2002).

The rise of digital history is in general perceived as the phase defined by the democratization of the personal computer technology, network applications and the development of open-source software (Thomas 2004, Cohen & Rosenzweig 2005, Graham, Milligan & Weingart 2015). With slight differences in periodization, medium-centered (e.g. relying on the use of the computer) genealogies see digital history at least partly as a descendant of quantitative and computational history, tracing its beginnings through the end of the 40s to the 60s (Thomas 2004, Graham, Milligan & Weingart 2015). Broader approaches insist instead on the heritage of public and oral history (Noiret 2011, Scheinfeldt 2014). Digital history participated greatly to the rise and development of the field of digital humanities since the mid-2000s (Schreibman et al. 2004, Kirschenbaum 2010, Gold 2012). However, specific disciplinary objects, sources and approaches continue to be present within the connected use of methods and tools that takes place under the digital humanities big tent. A typology of digital history projects identifies three main fields: academic research, public history, and pedagogy projects, of which the last two categories are considered particularly specific to historians within the digital humanities field (Robertson 2016).

Program

Monday 27.11.2017

Espace Baïetto 

• 9:00 - 9:45 Welcome coffee
• 9:45 -10:00 Welcome message Martine Benoit (Director Maison européenne des sciences de l’homme et de la société)
• 10:00 - 10:45 Introduction Digital History: On the heuristic potential of thinkering. Andreas Fickers (Director Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History - C2DH)
• 10:45 - 11:45 Keynote Modelisation of hierarchical organization of rural medieval society. Bertrand Jouve, Senior Researcher CNRS, president of the National Network of Humanities and Social Sciences Institutes of France

Lunch Break

13:00 - 14:00  Digital History in Context

Chair

Mareike König (German Historical Institute Paris)

• The present and future of digital history and computational historical research. Brandon Sepulvado (U. Notre Dame)
• Building a new Digital History Lab in a time of crisis: Between scholarship and "workforce development". James Mokhiber (U. New Orleans)

Break

14:15 - 15:15 Time and Space of Digital History

Chair

Andreas Fickers (C2DH, Université du Luxembourg) 

• Hyperspaces for History: Multidimensional Mappings and Locating Uncertainties. Charles van den Heuvel (U. Amsterdam)
• Searching for the first digital game featuring historical content: Is this digital history? Tobias Winnerling (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)

Break

• 15:30- 16:30 Keynote: Distrustful Brothers 2.0 - On the relationship of quantitative history and "digital" history. Manfred Thaller (emeritus professor U. Cologne)
• 16:30 - 17:30 Presentation of the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History - C2DH doctoral training unit

Tuesday 28.11.2017

Espace Baïetto

8:00 - 8:30 Opening Coffee

8:30 - 10:00 Digital Hermeneutics

Chair

Manfred Thaller (U.Cologne)

• Hybrid approaches to historical research: Analyzing the Anne Frank diaries with digital tools. Gerben Zaagsma (Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History - C2DH)
• Digital Historical Intertextuality or Challenging the Qualitative/Quantitative Fringe. Efthymis Kokordelis (Cologne Center for eHumanities)
• Approches qualitatives et quantitatives des témoignages de la Shoah : retours d'expérience. Bieke Van Camp (U. Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)

Break

10:15 - 12:15 Modeling and Visualizing Historical Data

Chair

Marten Düring (C2DH, Université du Luxembourg) 

• Visualizing Visions. Floor Koeleman (Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History)
• Automated semantic interpretation of architectural digital imagery: Writing and rewriting Postmodern Tel Aviv-Jaffa architectural history. Yael Allweil, Or Aleksandrowicz (aculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology)
• De la démarche fondamentale à la démarche appliquée : approche interdisciplinaire des dynamiques forestières de l'Avesnois (Nord). Marie Debarre (U. Valenciennes et Hainaut-Cambrésis)
• Visualizing the Birth of Settler Colonial Empires Using Multimodal Digital Historical Research Methods. Ashley R. Sanders (Digital Research Studio, The Claremont Colleges)

Lunch Break

14:00 - 16:00 History, Historians and the Internet (1)

Chair

Mareike König (German Historical Institute Paris)

• Individual Histories in the Russian Internet: Participation and Autonomy? Milena Rubleva (National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russian Federation)
• The passion about amateur history on the Greek web during the current economic crisis. Panagiotis Zestanakis (U. Crète | Crete)
• Born-Digital Sources: Web Archives and their Challenges. Richard Deswarte (U. East Anglia)
• Permettre l'exploitation numérique d'archives par le biais de la numérisation enrichie d'un corpus de sources : retour d'expérience autour de la Bibliothèque Historique de l'Éducation. Solenn Huitric (Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes)

Break

16:15 - 17:45 History, Historians and the Internet (2)

Chair

Serge Noiret (European University Institute)

• L'historien sur le fil de la toile : historiciser la fabrique mémorielle en ligne dans les années 2000 à partir des archives françaises du Web. Sophie Gebeil (U. Aix-Marseille)
• A la recherche de "flame wars". Alexandre Hocquet, Frédéric Wieber (U. Lorraine)
• Archives du Web : transmets-moi si tu peux. Valérie Schafer (CNRS, Institut des sciences de la communication)

Wednesday 29.11.2017

Espace Baïetto

8:00 - 8:30 Opening Coffee

8:30 - 10:00 Oral History in the Digital Age : Change and Continuity

Chair

Frédéric Clavert (C2DH, Université du Luxembourg)

• L'histoire orale numérique: changements, continuités et défis. Myriam Fellous-Sigrist (King’s College London)
• Multi-Media “Mosaic Modes” for Oral/Public History. Michael Frisch (U. d’ État de New York à Buffalo | SUNY at Buffalo)
• Does Public History need to be digital ? / L’histoire publique doit-elle être numérique? Daphné Budasz, Romain Duplan, Iris Pupella-Nogues (La boîte à histoire)

Break

10:15 - 12:15 Representing the Past

Chair

Serge Noiret (European University Institute)

• The Italian House/Museum of Joe Petrosino, An Anti-Mafia New York Police Officer. Marcello Ravveduto (Università degli Studi di Salerno)
• The Spanish Flu in Dublin c.1918, from burial records to an interactive map. Richard Legay (Centre for Contemporary and Digital History - C2DH), Kit Krupp
• Deconstructing Historical Massively Multiplayer Online Games: how people deal with an interactive past. Elias Stouraitis (Ionian U.)
• L'atelier digital de l'historien : Euchronie, entre histoire numérique et histoire publique. Rémy Besson (U. Montréal), Sébastien Poublanc (U. Toulouse, Labex Structuration des mondes sociaux)

Lunch Break

14:00 - 15:30 Public History in Local, National and Global Perspectives 

Chair

Stéphane Michonneau, U. Lille SHS

• The Cow, the Mayor, a Glass of Wine: a Digital Public History Project on the hundredth edition of the Lausanne National Fair. Anne-Katrin Weber, Claire-Lise Debluë (U. Lausanne)
• Le passé numérique d'une ville. Enjeux et potentialités de digital history à travers le projet "Open Jerusalem". Maria Chiara Rioli - Louise Corvasier (OpenJerusalem), Christophe Jacobs - Benjamin Suc (Limonade & Co)
• Memorial Democràtic's project “Memory at a click”: an online archive as a reparation public policy. Gerard Corbella (Memorial Democràtic, Generalitat de Catalunya)

Break

16:00 - 17:30 Conclusive Round Table

Michael Frisch, Mareike König, James Mokhiber, Stéphane Lamassé (to be confirmed), Serge Noiret, Manfred Thaller, Gerben Zaagsma