Hidden Histories

About the Project

Hidden Histories is a research project investigating the application of computational methods to the humanities during the period from 1949 to the present. The project conducts, collects and disseminates interviews with scholars and practitioners who were active during this period.

Combining interviews with archival data, we gain new insight into the emergence of the field known today as digital humanities.

Historical Context

It is widely accepted that the application of computational methods to the humanities can be traced back to at least 1949, when Roberto Busa envisaged an index variorum of some 11 million words of medieval Latin in the works of Thomas Aquinas and related authors. Notes and contributions towards a history of computing in the humanities have appeared in recent years; however, our understanding of such developments remains incomplete and largely unexplored.

Our Approach

This project gathers and makes available sources that enable the investigation of the social, intellectual and cultural context that shaped the earliest applications of computing to the humanities. It is from this context that the title 'Hidden Histories' derives—because, for the most part, such information cannot be gleaned from extant documentation.

The project is interdisciplinary in its methodology and draws on oral history, digital humanities and cultural studies. With the aim of capturing memories, observations and insights that are rarely recorded in the scholarly literature, we conduct interviews with scholars and practitioners who applied computational methods to the humanities from the age of mainframe computing to the present day.