Course Becoming a Digital Historian

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ECTS: 1

Course leader: Helle Strandgaard Jensen

Language: English

Graduate school: Faculty of Arts

Course fee: 0.00 DKK

Status: Course is open for application

Semester: Spring 2026

Application deadline: 24/04/2026

Cancellation deadline: 01/05/2026

Course type: Blended learning

Start date: 27/05/2026

Administrator: Andreas Mølgaard Laursen

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Allocation of seats

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Course description

This course explores what it means to practice digital history and helps PhD students situate their own research within this expanding field. Students will have ample opportunities to reflect on how they can combine traditional historical domain expertise with digital methods in meaningful and responsible ways. The course makes participants able to reflect on practices from a wide range of different parts within the field of digital history, including but not limited to, the matching of tool for digital analysis in combination with a specific research question and/or methodological reflections on how different approaches to digitisation of archives impact the participants own research.

The course also addresses the challenges and opportunities that accompany doing history in a rapidly changing technological landscape where also the very definition of digital history continues to evolve.

Aim/Learning outcomes

  • By the end of the course, students will be able to:
  • Present themselves as digital historians in ways that are recognisable and credible to scholars both within history and beyond.
  • Receive constructive feedback on how they integrate historical domain knowledge and digital methods in their dissertation work.
  • Apply practical strategies for highlighting their digital competencies on CVs, job applications, and grant proposals.

Requirements for participation

  • Short (100 word) presentation of the overall argument of the thesis, key source base, and the use of digital methods (if already known)

Target group/Participants

  • Any PhD in history no matter level

Workload

  • Course/ teaching hours: 6hrs on 27 May (including oral presentation) + 6hrs participation in workshop (presentation optional) on 28 May
  • Preparation hours: Readings + preparation of oral presentation for 27 May 13 hrs.
  • Written assignments etc.: Oral presentation for group of fellow PhD students and teachers on 27 May

Language 

  • English

Lecturers

  • Helle Strandgaard Jensen, Professor, Aarhus University
  • Adela Sobotkova, Associate Professor, Aarhus University
  • Johan Heinsen, Professor, Aalborg University
  • Barbara Revuelta, Senior Researcher, The National Archives

Literature

  • To be distributed after the application deadline.

Venue

  • - Will be filled out by the administration

Course dates:

  • 27 May 2026 10:30 - 15:30
  • 28 May 2026 10:00 - 16:30