Digital History of Education

The Research Area in Detail

The activities within this research area center on working with digital sources, applying digital methods and tools, and further developing existing research infrastructures while establishing new ones. Through various projects, researchers demonstrate how the humanities and social sciences – particularly the history of education – can benefit from digital infrastructures. These projects also explore new analytical possibilities and the knowledge potential of source materials relevant to educational history, enabled by methods and tools from the digital humanities.

Additionally, the field investigates innovative ways to communicate and present research findings through virtual research environments. Visualization and visual interfaces are integral, serving both as presentation formats and as tools for knowledge discovery. To support this work, the Digital History of Education Lab (DHELab), a dedicated makerspace, has been established.

This research often involves the digitally supported analysis of large text corpora, which would be infeasible with traditional methods. For example, combining database-driven reference analyses and network analyses across extensive collections of sources can identify influential figures within 18th-century pedagogical discourse or analyze pedagogical journals through text mining. Such approaches enable longitudinal observations of pedagogical topics, highlight specialized terminology, key terms, or thematic cesura.

Beyond quantitative analyses, visual representations are extensively employed to interpret and illustrate relationships within diverse research data, including historical texts and images. Researchers utilize existing tools and prototypes, as well as develop new visual formats, to address specific research questions effectively.

Selected Introductory Articles