In this lecture, taught as part of the course “Concepts and Context of Digital History” at TU Darmstadt, Dr Daniele Metilli, Research Fellow at the Sloane Lab, introduces students to the use of data as a source for historical research, looking at different kinds of data and forms of scholarship that Digital Humanities (DH) projects are making available, e.g. TEI-XML files, data models, ontologies, and vocabularies, and what new possibilities are enabled by the application of digital technologies to Humanities data.
The lecture begins with a general discussion of data in DH (and digital history in particular), what kind of new avenues of research are enabled, and what are the main challenges and pitfalls, including ethical issues. Concrete examples from the Sloane Lab are used to illustrate the complexities of working with historical data, showing the importance of critical engagement with data sources and collaboration between different fields to overcome the issues that arise.