Historical scholarship is currently undergoing a digital turn. All historians have experienced this change in one way or another, by writing on word processors, applying quantitative methods on digitalized source materials, or using internet resources and digital tools.
Digital Histories showcases this emerging wave of digital history research. It presents work by historians who - on their own or through collaborations with e.g. information technology specialists - have uncovered new, empirical historical knowledge through digital and computational methods. The topics of the volume range from the medieval period to the present day, including various parts of Europe. The chapters apply an exemplary array of methods, such as digital metadata analysis, machine learning, network analysis, topic modelling, named entity recognition, collocation analysis, critical search, and text and data mining.
The volume argues that digital history is entering a mature phase, digital history 'in action', where its focus is shifting from the building of resources towards the making of new historical knowledge. This also involves novel challenges that digital methods pose to historical research, including awareness of the pitfalls and limitations of the digital tools and the necessity of new forms of digital source criticisms.
Through its combination of empirical, conceptual and contextual studies, Digital Histories is a timely and pioneering contribution taking stock of how digital research currently advances historical scholarship.
Fridlund, Mats: - Mats Fridlund is Deputy Director for the Centre for Digital Humanities at the University of Gothenburg. He has a PhD in History of Technology from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. His research focuses on cultural and political history of science, technology and materiality. He has lead two Kone Foundation digital history projects and published on topic modelling in historical studies and used digital methodologies to study history of terrorism and Chinese industrialisation.
Oiva, Mila: - Mila Oiva is a cultural historian, digital humanist and anexpert on Russian and Polish history. She has a PhD in Cultural History from the University of Turku. Currently she works as a post-doctoral Research Fellow at CUDAN Open Lab at the Tallinn University, Estonia. Her main research interest focuses on circulation of information which she has studied in research projects on 19th-century global news flows and contemporary Finnish and Russian internet forum discussions on medieval history.
Paju, Petri: - Petri Paju is a cultural historian with research interests in the development of digital history and its uses, and in history of technology. He has a PhD in Cultural History from the University of Turku. He has previously worked in digital history projects funded by the Kone Foundation and the Academy of Finland. He has written broadly on the history of technology in Finland and on computing history in the Nordic countries, and the IBM Company in postwar Europe.
