Course The Archived Web as Research Data

Course description

If you want to know anything about what has happened in the last 30 years, the World Wide Web is an excellent data source. Whether you are a contemporary historian, a political scientist, anthropologist, economist, sociologist, a cultural studies scholar, a natural scientist, or any other kind of researcher, the old Web has data for you. Since 1996, the Internet Archive has been archiving content from a wide range of sites worldwide. This means that today we have access to everything from the website of Bill Clinton’s time in the White House and chats between Korean teenagers to weather forecasts, writings about the 2008 economic crisis, parenting advice, old computer games and the corporate branding strategies of the largest firms in the world.

In this course, PhD students will learn to use archived websites as data sources for their own projects. We will cover the technical processes of web archiving and its methodological implications, and we will introduce ways of working with data that students need for their individual projects. The analytical approach will cover both traditional ‘close’ reading methods (reading one website manually) and ‘distant’ reading methods (using computers to analyse large corpora).

Aim/Learning outcomes

After the course, the PhD student

• understands how digital tools are used to preserve and study the past web and can reflect on the relationship between web archives and their scholarship, including the key theoretical, methodological, political, cultural and technical matters connected thereto.
• can use appropriate digital tools in the analysis of archived web data, and critically evaluate the potential benefits and challenges associated with the use of this data and digital methods.
• identify appropriate digital tools for specific tasks and apply these to analyses of archived web data; identify needs and develop strategies for self-training in digital tools, including the ability to troubleshoot potential problems

Requirements for participation

• The PhD student must identify a theme/problem/issue they want to work on and 2-5 websites they wish to study while doing so.

Target group/Participants

• Any PhD student interested in working with the archived web as research data is welcome. No technical knowledge needed. Any field/background.

Workload

• Course/ teaching hours: Friday 20 March 9:30-16; Wednesday 20 May 10:15-15:45; Thursday 21 May, 10:30-17:30.
• Preparation hours: 10
• Written assignments etc.: Oral presentation plus short written reflection paper.

Language 

• English

Lecturers

• Helle Strandgaard Jensen, Professor, Aarhus University
• Emily Maemura, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois.
• Teaching assistants will come from the ERC WEB CHILD-project

Literature

• To be distributed after the application deadline.

Venue

• 20 March 2026. 09.30-16.00. Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5 , 8000 Aarhus C. Building 1461, room 616
• 20 May 2026. 10.15-15.45. Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5 , 8000 Aarhus C. Building 1461, room 516
• 21 May 2026. 10.30-17.30. Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5 , 8000 Aarhus C. Building 1461, room 516

Course dates:

• 20 March 2026 09:30 - 16:00
• 20 May 2026 10:15 - 15:45
• 21 May 2026 10:30 - 17:30