Ninth Conference on Digital History and Digital Humanities
Location: German Historical Institute Washington
Date: March 18–19, 2027
Deadline for Submissions: September 6, 2026

Co-convened with the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH), the Chair for Digital History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz, the Chair for Contemporary History at the University of Mannheim, and NFDI4Memory.

Digital technologies have fundamentally transformed the production, circulation, preservation, management, and interpretation of historical sources. Contemporary history is increasingly confronted with sources that are not simply digitized versions of analog records, but born-digital traces: emails, databases, social media posts, websites, digital images, messaging apps, spreadsheets, geodata, audiovisual files, code, metadata, and AI-generated content. These sources are unstable, fragile, platform-dependent, and often inaccessible both for research and even to the institutions that initially produced them. At the same time, they constitute crucial evidence for political, social, cultural, legal, and economic histories of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This conference takes the problem of born-digital sources as a central challenge for contemporary history and digital history alike. It asks how historians, archivists, information scientists, legal scholars, and digital humanities practitioners can work together to ensure that born-digital materials will be accessible as sources for research, while also developing tools and strategies that support their critical analysis.

One of the starting points for this conference in the German context is the position paper “NFDI4Memory: Damit wir auch zukünftig eine Vergangenheit haben” (Ensuring that the Future Has a Past). The authors argue for much closer cooperation between archival science and historical research in response to the changing conditions of the production of historical evidence. The mass availability of cataloging and metadata, they note, produces volumes of information that humans can no longer productively oversee, requiring new digital tools for enrichment, standardization, and analysis. Such tools are already being adopted in both archives and research communities. 

Comparative perspectives reveal that the preservation of born-digital records depends on distinct professional cultures, legal frameworks, and institutional responsibilities. In the United States, for example, records management, including electronic records management, has long served as an important bridge between administrators, archivists, and, potentially, historians. For government records, standards are shaped by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), including guidelines for official social media records, as well as by state archives. Private and non-governmental organizations often develop their own practices, resulting in a more uneven landscape of preservation, access, and accountability. Yet even where standards exist, major challenges remain: records managers may lack enforcement authority; institutions may lack funding, staffing, and technical infrastructures; and political priorities may undermine commitments to transparency and preservation. These problems point to broader international differences in how born-digital records are managed, preserved, and made available as future historical evidence. For more than two decades, scholars and practitioners have warned that overcoming divides between archivists, historians, records managers, and computer scientists is essential if we are to avoid the losses associated with a possible “digital dark age,” as Roy Rosenzweig already argued in 2003.

The challenges become even more urgent when we shift our focus from archives to producers of born-digital records, including government agencies, legislative bodies, and courts. Even more complex are challenges for institutions not subject to federal and state electronic records management requirements and guidelines, such as political parties, corporations, NGOs, and media organizations. Common problems include a lack of guidelines, a lack of enforcement abilities, a lack of staffing and training, and a lack of affordable platforms and infrastructures. Records disappear in deletion routines, remain locked in proprietary systems, or become inaccessible due to changing software environments, legal restrictions, platform obsolescence, or phaseouts. Whether in democratic or in authoritarian regimes, political decisions and developments influence whether governments are committed to ensuring transparency, oversight, and accountability governed by processes accountable to the public, or whether electronic traces of evidence may be repressed or destroyed. 

Born-digital records are therefore not merely a technical or archival concern. They are central to public accountability, democratic transparency, and the very possibility of writing contemporary history. Or as Sarah Weicksel, Executive Director of the American Historical Association (AHA), recently observed in an interview with the Max Weber Foundation’s “Weltweit vor Ort”: “Part of the question, then, is whether the American public and researchers from around the world will have access to a full and complete accounting of governmental actions and records, both through the executive branch and throughout other branches of government.”

The transformation process requires new skills and offers new opportunities for researchers. Traditional methods and working practices must expand, and new research questions and opportunities are emerging. The advent of born-digital data has given rise to entirely new categories of sources, raising new questions about data management and analytics, as well as enhanced methods of source criticism. Born-digital materials therefore force us to rethink traditional historical and archival training, and disciplinary and professional boundaries between historical scholars, information and data professionals, including archivists, digital humanists, and computer scientists. What does it require to preserve a database, a social media feed, a messaging thread, or a dynamic website? How can historians reconstruct the provenance, integrity, and context of digital records? What forms of digital source criticism are needed when documents are produced, modified, enriched, compressed, deleted, or algorithmically reordered by technical systems? How should we treat AI-generated images, texts, videos, and synthetic media as sources of contemporary history? And how can historians respond when politically significant digital records vanish before they ever become archival objects?

Submission Guidelines 

The conference aims to create a forum for sustained exchange between those who preserve born-digital materials and those who interpret them as historical sources. By bringing together archival, methodological, technical, and historiographical perspectives, we seek to ask not only how born-digital records can be saved, but also how they can be made meaningful for contemporary history. We especially welcome contributions that combine methodological reflection with concrete case studies, project presentations, or hands-on approaches.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Digital forensics and born-digital evidence
  How can methods from digital forensics help historians and memory workers identify, preserve, authenticate, and interpret born-digital materials? What can forensic approaches reveal about deleted files, metadata, file systems, version histories, timestamps, or chains of custody? How can such methods be made accessible for historical research without reducing sources to purely technical artifacts?
• Digital source criticism 
  Born-digital sources require new forms of source criticism. Contributions may address provenance, authenticity, metadata, platform infrastructures, interface effects, algorithmic mediation, software dependencies, and the interpretive challenges of large-scale digital corpora. We are particularly interested in approaches that connect computational methods with hermeneutic interpretation. How can historians critically analyze sources that are too large, dynamic, or complex to be read through conventional methods alone?
• Working with born-digital governmental sources
  Present your in-progress or finished project based on the aforementioned new types of sources. What institutional, technological, and methodological challenges did you encounter? Are there advantages to the sources’ genuinely digital nature, which is unburdened by the time-consuming and error-prone aspects of retrodigitization?
• AI-generated content as sources of contemporary history
  Generative AI has rapidly become part of everyday communication, political campaigning, cultural production, journalism, administration, education, and memory work. How should historians approach AI-generated text, images, audio, video, or code as historical sources? What evidentiary status do synthetic media have? How can scholars distinguish, contextualize, and interpret AI-generated materials, especially when provenance is uncertain or deliberately obscured?
• Democratic fragility, deletion, and political accountability
  Digital records are central to democratic accountability, yet they are also vulnerable to deletion, manipulation, privatization, and selective preservation. We invite papers that examine the disappearance of data by political actors, the fragility of administrative records, the destruction or withholding of digital evidence, and the challenges of documenting political decision-making in digital environments. How can historians, archives, journalists, and civil society organizations respond when records disappear before they can be preserved?
• Archives, infrastructures, and national differences
  The preservation of born-digital sources depends on legal frameworks, archival mandates, technical infrastructures, institutional cultures, and funding structures. We welcome comparative perspectives on national, regional, and institutional differences in the collection, preservation, and accessibility of born-digital records. How do archives in different countries deal with government records, web archives, social media, email collections, or digital audiovisual materials? What can be learned from transnational comparison?
• Ethics, law, and data protection
  Born-digital sources raise pressing ethical and legal questions. How can researchers balance public interest, privacy, consent, copyright, data protection, and the right to be forgotten? What responsibilities do historians have when working with personal digital traces, leaked materials, or sensitive administrative data?
• Access, platforms, and the privatization of historical evidence
  Many born-digital sources are produced on commercial platforms that restrict access to researchers. Social media data, search engine results, messaging apps, and platform moderation records are often unavailable, incomplete, expensive, or legally difficult to obtain. Contributions may address the epistemological and political consequences of restricted data access. What kinds of contemporary history become impossible to write when platform data is inaccessible? What alternative methods, collaborations, or advocacy strategies are available?

We invite proposals in two formats:

1. Individual presentations of 20 minutes. Papers may present case studies, methodological interventions, archival projects, theoretical reflections, or comparative perspectives.
2. Workshops of 90 minutes for hands-on presentations of projects, tools, workflows, methods, or skills. Workshops may introduce participants to digital forensic methods, born-digital archival workflows, web archiving, metadata analysis, platform research, AI source criticism, or other practical approaches.

Proposals should include a title, an abstract of no more than 500 words (introducing state-of-the-art, research questions and objectives), a short biographical note of no more than 150 words, and an indication of the preferred format: workshop or individual presentation. Workshop proposals should also include a brief description of the intended structure and any technical requirements. Please submit your proposal to our conference platform https://app.smartsheet.eu/b/form/019e0327d9be7cc5b158b9b7cab2fc4f by September 6, 2026. 

Registration and Contact Information

Although we favor in-person attendance of participants and presenters, facilities for hybrid participation will be provided with the aim of making the event as inclusive as possible. Accommodations will be arranged and paid for by the conference organizers (for one presenter per paper or workshop). Participants will make their own travel arrangements; funding subsidies for travel are available upon request for selected scholars, especially those who might not otherwise be able to attend the workshop, including junior scholars and scholars from universities with limited resources. For further information regarding the event’s format and conceptualization, please contact Daniel Burckhardt, burckhardt@ghi-dc.org. For questions about logistics (travel and accommodation), please contact our event coordinator Nicola Hofstetter, hofstetter-phelps@ghi-dc.org.

Conference Committee

• Daniel Burckhardt, GHI Washington
• Andreas Fickers, Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH)
• Philipp Gassert, Chair for Contemporary History at the University of Mannheim
• Katharina Hering, GHI Washington
• Torsten Hiltmann, Chair for Digital History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Jana Keck, GHI Washington
• Atiba Pertilla, GHI Washington
• Thorsten Wübbena, Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz

Contact Information

For further information regarding the event’s format and conceptualization, please contact Daniel Burckhardt, burckhardt@ghi-dc.org. For questions about logistics (travel and accommodation), please contact our event coordinator Nicola Hofstetter, hofstetter-phelps@ghi-dc.org.

Contact Email

burckhardt@ghi-dc.org

URL: https://www.ghi-dc.org/events/event/date/between-big-data-and-obsolescence-born-digital-sources-contemporary-history-and-the-politics-of-access

SYMPOSIUM at Université Le Havre Normandie — 12–13 March 2027

Organisation : Comité Français de Cartographie, Université Le Havre Normandie (Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences), Identités et Cultures Research Group, Le Havre Heritage Library

In partnership with : Institut universitaire de France, Bibliothèque nationale de France, EPHE (Histara), CNRS (Laboratoire de médiévistique occidentale de Paris)

RATIONALE

This conference sets out to re-examine the place of women in the making, circulation, and reception of cartographic knowledge up to the 20th century, taking into account the various forms their participation took, the documentary biases inherent in the sources, and contemporary methodological issues. It is part of the broader field of the history of women in science and of the study of the gendered construction of knowledge.

An emerging field of research

While historiography has taken an interest in women in science since before the 1970s, and while the history of women and travel has been regularly explored, their role in cartography and their interest in maps only began to be studied around the turn of the 2000s, nearly thirty years later. This pioneering work emerged mainly in the English-speaking world (Shefrin, 1999; Hudson, Ritzlin, 2000; Dando, 2018, 2024; Tyner, 1997; 1999; 2001) and in Italy (Rossi, 2005). Christine Petto’s survey article “Women and Cartography” (2020) opened up more avenues than it closed.

This historiographical lag is even more pronounced in French scholarship. While French research has taken an interest in women cartographers of the 20th century (Robic, 1997, 2009), as well as in the important role they played in research institutions and libraries (Ginsburger, 2015; Ginsburger, Robic, 2017; Antonutti, 2020), studies of their place in the construction of cartographic knowledge before the 20th century remain too rare.

A systemic invisibilisation

As in other scientific fields, several factors combine to render women’s involvement in geography and cartography invisible. Women are difficult to trace in the archives because of their limited legal existence. Conventions of the time denied their competence or consigned them to anonymity out of modesty. Their identity dissolves into initials in place of a full name, or into the designation “widow,” which presents them as mere continuators of their husband’s work.

Women are also excluded from the historiography of authorial recognition in cartography because of a paradoxical requirement: complete mastery of the full range of skills involved in cartographic production (intellectual design, drawing, engraving). Yet almost no geographer possesses such total mastery, since cartographic production is, by its very nature, collaborative work. Thus, when a woman conceives a map intellectually without engraving it herself (the Carte de Tendre by Madeleine de Scudéry), present-day critics attribute authorship to the male engraver (François Chauveau). Conversely, women engravers are confined to the status of mere executants.

RESEARCH THEMES

Theme 1 – Trajectories and output of women cartographers

The conference will focus on women cartographers by:

• Tracing individual trajectories, without setting aside the role of widows in the continuity of family workshops, which deserves particular attention. While widows generally ran their late husband’s workshop for only a limited period (Barker, 1997, pp. 90–92), there are several notable exceptions, such as Mary Senex, who ran the workshop for fifteen years after her husband’s death, as did Marie Desmaretz, widow of Duval, Geneviève Hourlier, widow of Antoine de Fer, and Marie Darbisse, widow of Guillaume Delisle, to name just a few examples.
• Establishing the conditions of access to cartographic practice and the professional and family networks drawn upon.
• Examining the possible specificities of their output: a preference for certain cartographic forms such as allegorical or thematic maps (Carte de Tendre, the map by Marie Le Masson Le Golft, the work of the astronomer Nicole-Reine Lepaute), or “informal” maps produced in a playful or educational context.

Theme 2 – The “little hands” of cartography

Following the recent work of Françoise Waquet (2015, 2022) on the “little hands” of science, and of Delphine Gardey on women’s clerical work (2001), this conference could be an occasion to bring to light the largely unexplored, invisible work of women: informants, copyists, draughtswomen, engravers, illuminators, secretaries, and workshop hands. This effort has already been made for the first half of the 20th century (Swab, 2025), but it could equally be pursued for earlier periods, since women can sometimes be identified in depictions of workshops.

Theme 3 – Women readers and the reception of maps

The question of women as readers of maps — whether elite women, schoolmistresses, booksellers, schoolgirls, or students — opens up a particularly fertile field of investigation. On what occasions did these women encounter maps? On what media? And through what modes of reading?

This question also raises the issue of education, since reading a map presupposes prior training, and thus invites attention to the full range of women’s educational practices connected with maps. 

Finally, Christine Petto also points to periodicals and advertising aimed at women, as well as playful uses of maps: games, novels, embroidered maps, among other forms of appropriation. As an example, the map of Île de France (present-day Mauritius) included in the novel Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, a major publishing success of the late 18th century with a largely female readership, illustrates this still under-explored dimension of the reception of maps.

By adopting a broad chronological framework, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, the conference is open to all geographical areas. It is aimed at researchers in history, history of science, art history, literature, geography, and related disciplines.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Abstracts of c. 300 words, together with a short biographical note, should be submitted by 30 September 2026 to the following address: lucile.haguet@lehavre.fr

The selection committee will meet in early October and will announce the results of the call for papers no later than the second half of October.

The conference will take place on 12–13 March 2027 at Université Le Havre Normandie. A presentation of the heritage collections of the Le Havre municipal library is also planned.

Selected papers will be considered for publication in an issue of the journal of the Comité français de cartographie, Cartes & Géomatique, during 2028.

WORKS CITED AND SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Antonutti, Isabelle (ed.). 2020. Figures de bibliothécaires. Villeurbanne: Presses de l’Enssib, series “Papiers.” (see entry for Myriam Foncin)

Baigent, Elizabeth. 2025. “‘Octavia Always Enjoyed a Map’: Octavia Hill, Maps, and Victorian Women Reformers.” The Cartographic Journal 62 (3–4): 190–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/00087041.2025.2627791

Barker, Hannah. 1997. “Women, Work and the Industrial Revolution: Female Involvement in the English Printing Trades, c. 1700–1840.” In Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, ed. Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, 81–100. London: Longman.

Costa, Shelley. 2002. “The Ladies’ Diary: Gender, Mathematics, and Civil Society in Early-Eighteenth-Century England.” Osiris, 2nd series, 17: 49–73.

Dando, Christine E. 2018. Women and Cartography in the Progressive Era. London/New York: Routledge, series “Studies in Historical Geography.” New edition in 2024.

Findlen, Paula. 1995. “Translating the New Science: Women and the Circulation of Knowledge in Enlightenment Italy.” Configurations 3: 167–206.

Gardey, Delphine. 2001. La Dactylographe et l’expéditionnaire. Histoire des employés de bureau, 1890–1930. Paris: Belin, series “Modernités.”

Ginsburger, Nicolas. 2015. “Les premières géographes universitaires en France: enquête sur les débuts d’une féminisation disciplinaire (1913–1928).” Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography.

Ginsburger, Nicolas, and Marie-Claire Robic. 2017. “Portrait en groupe de femmes-géographes. La féminisation du champ disciplinaire au milieu du XXe siècle, entre effets de contexte et de structure (1938–1960).” Annales de géographie, 2017/1.

Hudson, Alice C., and Mary McMichael Ritzlin. 2000. “Preliminary Checklist of Pre-Twentieth-Century Women in Cartography.” Cartographica 37 (3): 3–24.

Longchamps, Denis. 2014. “Political Tourism: Elizabeth Simcoe’s Maps and Views of Canada (1791–1796).” Imago Mundi 66: 213–223.

Pastoureau, Mireille. 1984. Les atlas français, XVIe–XVIIe siècles: répertoire bibliographique et étude. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, Département des cartes et plans.

Pedley, Mary Sponberg. 1979. “The Subscription List of the 1757 Atlas Universel: A Study in Cartographic Dissemination.” Imago Mundi 31: 66–77.

Petto, Christine M. 2009. “Playing the Feminine Card: Women of the Early Modern Map Trade.” Cartographica 44 (2): 67–81.

Petto, Christine M. 2020. Women and Enlightenment: Women as Producers and Consumers of Maps, 1650–1800. History of Cartography, vol. 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Robic, Marie-Claire. 1997. “Exclusion, régression… Du ‘Ladies’ Program’ au ‘sans femme’?” Strates: Matériaux pour la recherche en sciences sociales, n° 9.

Robic, Marie-Claire. 2009. “Beaujeu-Garnier, J.” In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, ed. Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift, 275–276. Elsevier.

Rossi, Luisa. 2005. L’altra mappa. Esploratrici, viaggiatrici, geografe. Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 351 p.

Shefrin, Jill. 1999. “‘Make it a Pleasure and Not a Task’: Educational Games for Children in Georgian England.” Princeton University Library Chronicle 60: 251–275.

Shevelow, Kathryn. 1989. Women and Print Culture: The Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical. London: Routledge.

Skedd, Susan. 1997. “Women Teachers and the Expansion of Girls’ Schooling in England, c. 1760–1820.” In Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, ed. Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, 101–125. London: Longman.

Swab, Jack. 2025. “Beyond ‘Clerical Cartography’: Gender and the (Re)Production of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.” The Cartographic Journal 62 (3–4): 177–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/00087041.2025.2627789

Tyacke, Sarah. 1978. London Map-Sellers, 1660–1720: A Collection of Advertisements for Maps Placed in the London Gazette, 1668–1719, with Biographical Notes on the Map-Sellers. Tring: Map Collector Publications.

Tyner, Judith A. 1997. “The Hidden Cartographers: Women in Mapmaking.” Mercator’s World 2 (6): 46–51.

Tyner, Judith A. 1999. “Millie the Mapper and Beyond: The Role of Women in Cartography since World War II.” Meridian 15: 23–28.

Tyner, Judith A. 2001. “Following the Thread: The Origins and Diffusion of Embroidered Maps.” Mercator’s World 6 (2): 36–41.

Waquet, Françoise. 2015. L’Ordre matériel du savoir. Comment les savants travaillent, XVIe-XXIe siècle. Paris: CNRS Éditions (repr. series “Biblis,” 2022).

Waquet, Françoise. 2022. Dans les coulisses de la science. Techniciens, petites mains et autres travailleurs invisibles. Paris: CNRS Éditions, series “Histoire,” 347 p.

White, Cynthia L. 1970. Women’s Magazines, 1693–1968. London: Michael Joseph.

Contact Information

Lucile Haguet, librarian at the Bibliothèque municipale du Havre, lucile.haguet@lehavre.fr

Catherine Hofmann, map curator at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, catherine.hofmann@bnf.fr

Contact Email

catherine.hofmann@bnf.fr

URL

https://cartogallica.hypotheses.org

The Centre for the Book is pleased to announce that the theme of this year’s symposium is “Books and Silence.” Find more information at https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/cfb/2026-research-symposium-books-and-silence-26-27-november/ 

In today’s hurried world, noise is everywhere.  Do you want the chance to have silence to contemplate, reflect, and escape, with your best friend: the book? It is time to pen your paper on “Books and Silence.”

“Books and Silence” might suggest an exploration of deep reading, the value of uninterrupted contemplation in environments of disruption and hyper-connection, or the political or cultural implications of censorship.  The theme can cover everything from the quiet sanctuary of traditional libraries to the amplification of marginalized voices.  Presentations might consider:

The literary and psychological experience of books and reading

• Exploring the lost art of uninterrupted reading and how stepping away from digital distractions restores cognitive focus.
• Questioning how audio books do or do not fit within such a paradigm of reading.
• Analysing how authors utilize ‘silence’—what characters leave unsaid or what is omitted from the narrative—to build suspense, express complex grief, and reveal hidden truths.
• Focusing on silent (wordless or visual) picture books and how they transcend language and cultural barriers to spark communication.

The cultural and social roles of books and libraries

• The examination of the traditional no-talk ‘shoosh’ library to the modern hub of books and bean bags and social spaces. The changing nature of these sanctuaries.
• Censorship and anti-censorship: the silencing or amplification of ideas and thoughts; the fight against book bans and the suppression of marginalized or controversial ideas.

The philosophy of books and how readers interact with them

• Combatting noise, anxiety and constant over-stimulation of the wired life, with mindfulness and quiet engagement with words and ideas.
• The value of physical books and un-networked experience
• How the physical, deliberate silence around reading cultivates an active resistance against machine culture – social, institutional, political, commercial and ideological.

We would welcome interdisciplinary contributions from e.g., Music, Psychology, Theology, Education, or other disciplines.

Suggestions for panels are also welcome.

Deadline

Please send through your abstract of 250 words by 1 September 2026, by email to: books@otago.ac.nz

Date: November 26-27

Plenary address (speaker TBA), Thursday 26 Nov. – Dunningham Suite, City Library Dunedin

All day symposium: Friday 27 November – University of Otago (Arts Building, Burns 2 lecture theatre)

Selection of the papers for the Symposium programme will start after 1 September, and authors will be informed of their successful inclusion mid-September.

The conference will be free to attend, though registration will be required to ensure adequate catering for afternoon tea.  The Friday conference presentations will be recorded and made available afterward for viewing by those who register for access, but there will be no livestream or interactive connections on the day of the symposium.

Please contact any of us if you have any further queries:

• Dr Donald Kerr (donaldkerr550@gmail.com);
• Dr Shef Rogers (shef.rogers@gmail.com), or
• Assoc. Prof. Paul Tankard (paul.tankard@otago.ac.nz)