EC Workshop

EC Workshop by the ISCHE Education & Pandemics Archive on Digital Source Criticism

Convenors: Karin Priem (University of Luxembourg) | Fanny Isensee (Humboldt University, Berlin) | Ami Kobayashi (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau) | Rafaela Rabelo (Federal University of Uberlândia, Brazil) | Daniel Töpper (Humboldt University, Berlin) | Stefania Scagliola (external expert)

After last year’s successful panel on COVID-19 and Public History: A Critical Take on the Silences of Web Archives and the Silencing of COVID-19 Experiences, the ISCHE Education & Pandemics Archive Team would like to offer a new edition of its training program. This year’s workshop will once again encourage a critical debate on digital archives and digital sources to foster professional expertise in digital history among historians of education.

The workshop looks at how a selection of sources in the ISCHE Education & Pandemics Archive (https://www.ische.org/education-and-pandemics-archive/) were produced, collected, published, and communicated. Participants will therefore explore various types of digital source material. We will particularly focus on born-digital sources and use the Ranke.2 teaching aid that was co-designed by Stefania Scagliola at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg. Relevant issues highlighted at the workshop will include the creation, dissemination and reception, and preservation of born-digital sources. This means that we will also go beyond the interface of the Education & Pandemics Archive and explore the following questions: Who built the Education & Pandemics Archive? Who decides behind the scenes and are these decisions transparent? What kind of technologies are used? Are there any biases? How much did it cost, and who is sponsoring it and responsible for maintenance? How will it be used in ten years’ time? How many visitors does it have? Where is it hosted? If we imagine ourselves back in the pre-digital era, how could this type of information have been shared with audiences? What are the consequences of the radical changes in the way information about pandemics is disseminated and shared?

Participants are expected to engage in active participation and discussions with an international expert in digital history. We ask all participants to register for the workshop and to complete a survey ahead of time (“Education and Pandemics Archive” Pre-Conference Workshop), as we would like to prepare the workshop according to the profile and needs of those who will attend. Those who register for the workshop agree to the event being recorded so that it can be published on the ISCHE website for public use.

We ask participants to register by sending a short message to Karin Priem.