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Posts tagged ‘methods’

Sep 3

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Film archives: using moving images as historical sources

By Max Long

My first encounter with moving image archives took place in a windowless room in the basement of a building in London. I was there to view a selection of natural history films. I had watched similar films online, but here I could load, spool, and wind up the films myself. Films are the principal source in my research, but prior to my PhD, I had little experience with the medium. Here I was left alone with two towering piles of 35mm and 16mm films, and an unexpected lesson in the materiality of film technology.

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Mar 3

Call For Papers – Facing the Challenge of Bias in History: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

Bias is a fundamental problem encountered by historians studying all time periods, using all methods, and at all stages of their career. The conveners of a one-day workshop on Facing the Challenge of Bias in History, to be held on Sunday 15th May 2016 at the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge, therefore invite papers from historians in all sub-disciplines. Whether your work has confronted selection bias, bias inherent in a source, researcher bias, or any other form of bias, we would like to hear from you. By bringing together researchers from disparate areas of history, who might never usually come across each other’s work, we hope to explore a common problem and to collectively discuss ways of confronting this problem. Read more

Apr 23

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Call for Papers – Making ‘Big Data’ Human: Doing History in a Digital Age

Alison Richard Building, University of Cambridge, 9th September 2015

With Keynote Speaker Prof. Jane Winters, Professor of Digital History and Head of Publications, Institute of Historical Research

In a digital society, it is hard to escape discussions of ‘big data’, massive amounts of information that need database and software techniques for full processing.  But beyond this initial definition what does ‘big data’ really mean?  Do we already use it?  Why do we need to?  And how can we integrate this with historical research when using data sets simply too ‘big’ for traditional methods of analysis and presentation?  Reflections on the impact and the usage of data, which have perhaps been more forthcoming in the spheres of business and science, are still only starting to permeate through the humanities. Read more

Apr 21

Historical Voices

By Kayt Button, @kayt_button

Today we collect a vast array of readily available information in the form of statistics, stories, reports, and videos available publicly on the internet or through more official channels. These are created by journalists, public servants, and the public at large who are able to self-publish. Before the advent of what has been named “Big Data”, events were written down, or photographed, by a few individuals and published. Before that, pictures and oral histories recorded important events. All these sources have their own difficulties – in the case of Big Data, as the name suggests, the volumes of available information can be overwhelming. Hard copy written sources were authored by someone and understanding the writer can be as important as what they reported, which is also true of oral history, drawings, and photographic evidence. Read more

Mar 17

To ask or not to ask: that is the question

By Emily Ward, @1066unicorn

Palms sweating, mouth dry, heart pounding in my chest, my thoughts racing. I realise that I’m going to do it. Tentatively I gather my courage, swallow down the fear and start to raise my hand. Hand up, there’s no going back; I’m spotted and heads turn my way. Eyes on me, I open my mouth. Barely formulated sentences tumble out. I wait. Then clearly I have made enough sense that the watching eyes turn forward again. I have just asked my first question at a history conference.* Read more

Feb 19

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How do historians write?

By Tom Goodwin, @tgooders

Thomas is an MPhil student in Early Modern History. He is currently researching sixteenth-century Italian heretics and their use of the printing press.

I spent the morning putting in a comma; I spent the afternoon taking it out – Oscar Wilde

Writing history remains something of a dark art. From the beginning of your degree in history, there is a great deal of focus on how to do research: that is, how one should approach sources and analyse historical arguments, covering a wide range of different methods and theoretical approaches. Read more

Mar 12

Foreign Archives: how to plan your visit?

by Florence Largillière

Archives seem to feature prominently in our blog, but this is not without reason. Talking about archives and how historians deal with them is useful on two main levels. We hope to give some guidelines to new research students – as obvious as some of them may be. And we want to show that the work of a historian is more diverse and complicated than what is sometimes imagined. Before we sit at a desk and immerse ourselves for days in old papers, notes, letters, microfilms, photographs or videos, we spend hours looking for them. Read more

Feb 4

Reflections on Creating a Map

by Hira Amin

To showcase the sheer diversity in research being undertaken at the University of Cambridge by history MPhil and PhD students, I decided to create a map pinning each student to their research area. This brief article will outline the thought process and actions behind the final product.

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Jan 29

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Historians and correspondence: The case of Jews’ letters to the Fascist Ministry of the Interior

by Florence Largillière

First some historical context: in the 1930s, Italian Jews were considered as being well integrated into Italian society. They had supported the independence movements of the 19th century, they were heavily decorated during the First World War, and they participated in the political and social life of the country which had emancipated them in 1848. More than 700 Jews joined the fascist movement before the March on Rome in October 1922[1] and the first fifteen years of Fascism were relatively peaceful for the Jewish community. However, in November 1938, everything changed.  Read more