Adapting computational methods to challenges in historical research at scale

University of Helsinki (Finland)

Objectives: This project will apply CASCADE expertise to the study of ideas of nationalism through time and in different parts of Europe. By combining qualitative information from national and internationally-oriented discourse with more sophisticated semantic analyses and traditional close reading, it can shed new insights on past and present expressions of nationalism. As with ESR9 Ke Shu, it will be necessary to consider the impact of OCR shortcomings. Yu will: 1) test and refine NLP tools and techniques for analysing diachronic linguistic change to understand expressions of nationalism in European historical newspapers and how these change; 2) identify critical issues in tool development for scholarly purposes (e.g. user requirements for language analysis). Yu will require access to Europeana Newspapers and may use comparative material from British and Finnish National Newspapers Collections. They will have prior knowledge of NLP.

Expected Results: 
1) A study of the development of nationalism as expressed in European newspapers pre-1910.
2) Software for diachronic linguistic analysis adapted from existing NLP tools. Yu will present research at D7.1 and D7.4.

Planned secondments:  CSC IT Center For Science (Year 3, 5 months contributing to tool development, implementation and integration within CSC’s existing systems). Also visiting: Netherlands eScience Center, USFD (alternative frameworks for the history of concepts)