Networks in History: Data-driven tools for analyzing relationships across time

FAIN: HK-50087-13

Stanford University (Stanford, CA 94305-2004)
Dan Edelstein (Project Director: January 2013 to May 2017)
Paula Findlen (Co Project Director: January 2013 to May 2017)

A project to develop a general-purpose suite of visualization and analytical tools based on the prototypes created for the Mapping the Republic of Letters project, which examines the scholarly communities and networks of knowledge during the period 1500-1800.

Previous NEH-funding made it possible for "Mapping the Republic of Letters" project to develop a series of visualization prototypes to analyze the geographic breadth, historical shape, and social composition of intellectual networks; tools that support a domain expert's capacity to make sense of complexity, rather than relying on automated reasoning. With this project we will develop our most successful visualization techniques to serve historical research with three user groups in mind: 1. Digital humanities scholars with the technical expertise to integrate our code into their own projects and web applications (the "widget" model); 2. Scholars seeking easy upload, exploration, and analysis of historical data sets, without having to touch any code; 3. Early modern scholars who want to use these tools to explore and analyze their own data in the larger context of data already collected for "Mapping the Republic of Letters."