Welcome to the 3rd Digital History in Finland symposium at the University of Turku on Friday 30 November 2018. This is a continuation to two previous gatherings organized in Helsinki in 2015 and 2016. After a two-year break it is time to have a look on recent developments in this emerging field.
Since the 1990s, digital technologies have transformed the work of historians, not only in relation to how sources can be located and accessed but also in the way historians analyse and represent their findings for the academic readership as well as for the wider public. One of the first centres to explore these changes and their ramifications was the Virginia Center for Digital History, founded already in 1998, only a few years after the advent of the World Wide Web. As a concept, “digital history” has already a long history, but its meanings have changed through the decades, from the early emphasis on the ‘hypertextual power’ of information technology to the present enthusiasm for algorithmic methods in organizing big data.
Digital History in Finland III aims at bringing together historians who today work on different problems in digital history. The idea is to build an up-to-date view on what is happening in the field in Finland and to meet other scholars interested in similar questions.
The symposium will take place between 10-15 o’clock on 30 November. It will be followed by the annual Veikko Litzen lecture at 16.00. This year’s lecture is given by Tim Hitchcock, Professor of Digital History at the University of Sussex and the Co-Director of Sussex Humanities Lab (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/336034). Hitchcock’s lecture is titled:
Macroscopes and Microscopes: Computer assisted close reading of historical texts
Hitchcock will also participate in the Digital History in Finland symposium.
We invite submissions of short papers of 10 minutes on any aspect of digital history. The deadline for submitting a paper is Friday 9 November 2018. Please send the title of the presentation and a 100 word abstract to: and . Notification of acceptance and more information on symposium practicalities will be sent by 15 November 2018.
The symposium is organised by the Digital History Work Group of the Finnish Historical Society in cooperation with the Turku Group for Digital History and the project From Roadmap to Roadshow: A collective demonstration & information project to strengthen Finnish digital history (funded by the Kone Foundation).