Many network analysis projects rely on somewhat ready-made sources for data; for example: email logs, questionnaires, church registers, letter exchanges and trade relations make it relatively easy to identify who is connected to whom and how. It is, however, considerably more difficult to extract quantifiable data from text. Some issues to consider here are: how can we bridge the gap between the depth of hermeneutics and data analysis? How can we systematize text interpretation?

This first workshop will address the above question and provide hands-on experience with the extraction of network data from a narrative through the use of methods developed in qualitative data analysis. Participants will work with a first-person narrative of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust and extract data using an existing coding scheme.

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.