by Sophie Spliethoff & Virgile Reignier
From 23rd to 25th October 2024, the German Historical Institute in Paris opened its doors to about 50 international scholars who discussed past, present and future developments of digital history at the conference “Revolutionary, Disruptive, or Just Repeating Itself? Tracing the History of Digital History”. The conference program can be found here: https://dhdhi.hypotheses.org/9978.
Starting with questions of defining the field, differentiating it from similar research areas and tracing its relations to historical research as well as digital humanities, research identities and communities were at the center of debate. Main topics also included ethical aspects and power structures implicated by digital practices, the institutionalisation of the field as well as teaching and communicating digital historical research. Ultimately, at the heart of the conference laid the questions of the ways in which digital history itself becomes historicised and how regional and global histories of the field may or may not be written.
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