The digital preservation of and digital research into our cultural heritage is the aim of the Department of Digital Humanities. In terms of content, the semantic and formal indexing and mediation of digital representations of cultural artifacts is the central research topic of the department. One of the most recent and most interesting projects is GlossIT, analysing glosses – annotations to medieval texts – in their function as first-hand testimonies for the close linguistic and cultural connections between Insular Celtic and Latin speakers. Glosses are fingerprints of the society in which texts were composed, copied, and read. Most important, they offer insights into the multilingual and multi-ethnic environment of medieval manuscript and text production. The project acquired an ERC Consolidator Grant in late 2023.
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Another project – funded by the ERC with an Advanced Grant – explores the interaction of human and artificial intelligence in a virtual research environment for medieval studies. Computers need lots of examples to “learn” – and they need people to interpret the suggestions they make. Man and machine collaborate in investigating more than 600,000 medieval and early modern legal documents on the web portal monasterium.net. In order to properly classify these stories, you need to know what people in the past wanted to record in documents, how they did it and what they used them for. Researchers investigate European trends and regional differences in the design and use of 14th and 15th century charters. What influence did pan-European political institutions such as the Roman Church have on regional documentary practice? How did local and regional notarisation practices react to the spread of Roman law among the legal thinkers of Europe? How do the two widespread authentication practices, by seal and by notarial signature, relate to each other? The observations made on the digital representations of the documents will be related to major European events such as the Western Schism (1378-1417) or the Great Plague (1348/49) and the ensuing economic crisis.
Cutting-edge historical research is also conducted at the Department of Classics. The project COLLAPSE is questioning our notion of authorship in ancient texts, since in antiquity texts were the universal commons of all those who drew on them. This problem forms the starting point for the research. Imperial Greek literature serves as a fertile ground to re-think anonymised text production. Contrary to the assumptions of romantic genius aesthetics, the project regards authorship as a collaborative cultural practice of the Pre-Modern World. It takes up current developments, such as the popular fanfiction narratives on digital platforms, considering these approaches to canonical texts as diachronic forms of co-authorship.