Marianne Backes, Director of the CVCE, and René Leboutte from the University of Luxembourg introduce the two consecutive days of the DHLU 2013 Symposium entitled ‘Contemporary history in the digital age’.

The first part of the first panel of the DHLU 2013 Symposium, chaired by René Leboutte from the University of Luxembourg, explores the topic ‘Distant/close reading’ by means of three presentations. The first, by Sacha Zala and Christiane Sibille, both from the Dodis research group, is entitled ‘Beyond a national historiography? Networking diplomatic documents in the digital age’. In the second, Arianna Betti and Hein Van Den Berg from VU University Amsterdam discuss the subject ‘Creating a digital history of ideas’. To close this part, Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol from the University of Glasgow presents his paper entitled ‘Digital sources in European integration history/international economic history: a frustrated view’.

The second part of the first panel of the DHLU 2013 Symposium, moderated by Lars Wieneke, Head of the CVCE’s Information and Technology Department, looks at the question of ‘Research networks in the digital humanities’. Sally Chambers, Secretary-General of DARIAH-EU, presents the research infrastructure ‘DARIAH — a Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities’. Lorna M. Hughes introduces ‘NeDiMAH — Network for Digital Methods in the Arts and Humanities’. To conclude this second part, Daniel Alves adds to this introduction by presenting his working group, the ‘NeDiMAH workgroup on space and time’.

The second panel of the DHLU 2013 Symposium, moderated by Claudine Moulin from the University of Trier, explores the central theme of ‘Distant/close reading’ through three presentations. The first is given by Pauline Van Wierst, Sanne Vrijenhoek, Stefan Schlobach and Arianna Betti, who have developed the tool: ‘Phil@Scale: Computational methods within philosophy’. Lars Wieneke, Head of the CVCE’s Information and Technology Department, and Marten Düring, Researcher at the CVCE, then present ‘Humanist-machine interaction for the digital humanities’. To conclude this panel, Frederik Elwert from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum presents his paper entitled ‘Network analysis between distant reading and close reading’.

The first day of the DHLU 2013 Symposium concludes with a keynote address by Tim Hitchcock from the University of Sussex entitled ‘Big data for dead people: Digital readings and the conundrums of positivism’.

René Leboutte from the University of Luxembourg and Lars Wieneke, Head of the CVCE’s Information and Technology Department, give their conclusions at the end of the first day of the DHLU 2013 Symposium.

The third panel of the DHLU 2013 Symposium, moderated by Marten Düring, Researcher at the CVCE, explores the topic ‘Writing history & assessing scholarship’ through two presentations. The first, by Luke Kirwan, is entitled ‘Quantitative historical research in the digital age: Using databases to drive research forward’. The second presentation is by Eva Wohlfarter, group member of the ABaC:us project run by the Institute for Corpus Linguistics and Text Technology, on the subject ‘Introducing the Austrian baroque corpus: Annotation and application of a thematic research collection’.

The fourth panel of the DHLU 2013 Symposium, moderated by Serge Noiret from the European University Institute in Florence, focuses on the theme ‘Distant/close reading’. Dr Waltraud Bayer gives a presentation entitled ‘Digital sources in contemporary post-Soviet museum studies’. Ian Gregory then speaks on ‘Distant and close readings of the geographies in large corpora: Geographical text analysis and place-based reading’.

The fifth panel of the DHLU 2013 symposium, moderated by Lars Wieneke, Head of the CVCE’s Information and Technology Department, features two presentations on the topic ‘Distant/close reading’. Dorothée Goetze and Tobias Tenhaef from the University of Bonn’s Institute for Historical Peace Research give a presentation on ‘How to face the crisis of legitimacy: the transfer and further development of methods of access from printed to digitalized editions’. The panel concludes with a presentation by Luis Gil Tiago entitled ‘Atlas numérique de l’Amérique portugaise’.

The sixth panel, which concludes this DHLU 2013 Symposium, explores the theme ‘Writing history’. The panel is moderated by Susana Muñoz, Head of the CVCE’s European Integration Studies Department. Kate Jones presents her paper entitled ‘Digital history with maps: A case study from WW2 in London’. Geert Kessels and Pim van Bree, software engineers at LAB1100, then present their research on ‘Multiple forms of authorship through the assemblage of historical objects’.

Marianne Backes, Director of the CVCE, Tim Hitchcock from the University of Sussex and René Leboutte from the University of Luxembourg present their conclusions at the end of the DHLU 2013 Symposium.