This second workshop will build on the data extracted during the first workshop and will provide participants with the technical skills to use entry-level software tools to visualize and explore social networks. Here are some of the questions that we will consider:

1. how do visualizations change our perception of coded data?
2. how can we translate hypotheses into data visualizations and which new questions can network visualizations raise?

We will also critically assess the added value of network visualizations, the underlying principles behind visualization layouts as well as network computations, and finally, their potential to mislead uncritical audiences.

Prerequisites:

None! These workshops are conceptualized as a gentle introduction to the topic and are meant for humanists with an interest in social network analysis. No technical skills in network visualization or software are expected or required.

In order to be better prepared for the extraction of network data and to gain some background knowledge about the case study, participants may want to read Ralph Neumann’s autobiographical report about his survival in 1940s Berlin, available here: http://www.gdw-berlin.de/fileadmin/bilder/publ/publikationen_in_englischer_sprache/2006_Neuman_eng.pdf.

Note: While session material is related, each workshop is designed to stand on its own. All are welcome to attend one or both!

Instructor

Marten Düring is the CDHI Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital History at UNC Chapel Hill’s Digital Innovation Lab and the History Department. He studied cultural history at the universities of Augsburg, Germany and Manchester, United Kingdom with a focus on the history of the Second World War and has a strong interest in interdisciplinary and computational research methods in the Humanities and History in particular. In July 2012 he successfully defended his dissertation, which introduces a relational perspective to the analysis of help for persecuted Jews during the Holocaust. This is the first formalized analysis of relations between helpers and recipients of help and among the first projects that apply formal network methods in Contemporary History.

As a side project Düring developed the website http://historicalnetworkresearch.org, which bundles information on network analysis in the historical disciplines, and established a workshop series on the topic together with colleagues.