This document is an historical remnant. It belongs to the collection Skeptron Web Archive (included in Donald Broady's archive) that mirrors parts of the public Skeptron web site as it appeared on 31 December 2019, containing material from the research group Sociology of Education and Culture (SEC) and the research programme Digital Literature (DL). The contents and file names are unchanged while character and layout encoding of older pages has been updated for technical reasons. Most links are dead. A number of documents of negligible historical interest as well as the collaborators’ personal pages are omitted.
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URL of this page is www.skeptron.uu.se/broady/sec/e-070510-prosop.htm

Exploring New Methods for Prosopography in the Humanities and the Social Sciences

A European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop

Uppsala University, May 10th-11th, 2007

Programme <www.skeptron.uu.se/broady/sec/e-070510-esf-workshop-prosopography.pdf>

Report <www.skeptron.uu.se/broady/sec/e-070510-esf-workshop-prosopography-report.pdf>

For detailed information on the workshop see http://www.skeptron.uu.se/monicalz/esf/

This workshop is open only to a limited circle of invited scholars, in accordance with the European Science Foundations (ESF) directives for Exploratory Workshops. It will be chaired by Harold Short, Director of Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH), King’s College London, and Donald Broady, Director of Sociology of Education and Culture (SEC), Uppsala University.

Aims

Prosopography is used in historical studies of ancient, medieval and modern societies and in sociologically oriented studies of modern and contemporary societies. Prosopography is the collective study of common characteristics of groups of individuals, hitherto most often historical actors but in sociological studies also contemporary individuals. By means of comprehensive data collection and thorough investigations on common background characteristics such as social origin, occupation, inherited and acquired resources and positions in society, education, place of residence, religion, economical status etcetera scholars explore and analyse the material. Although outcomes and uses of prosopographical databases vary amongst historically and sociologically oriented prosopographers much of the methods for collecting and compiling the materials are essentially the same even though the foci of study, purposes and tools differ. Thus, scholars in very different disciplinary fields who utilise prosopographical methods are seldom very well informed of each others work. Therefore the need for a meeting places such as the planned workshop.

The workshop will bring together scholars from different disciplines with a shared interest in prosopographical research. A particular aim is to create an encounter between on the one hand prosopographical methods used in certain kinds of historical research, on the other hand so called geometric data analysis methods most often used in more sociologically oriented research, mainly of French provenience. Another aim will be to share experiences and ideas of the uses of advanced computer technology. During the workshop there will be presentations, discussions and exchanges of ideas, demonstrations of technical tools, and not the least explorations of the possibilities of future collaborative research across disciplines. If all works out well, the workshop might lead to a proposal for a European Interdisciplinary Prosopography Research Network.

Meeting and exchanges on new methods in prosopography could not be accomplished without transnational collaboration. The forefronts of prosopographical research in the humanities in Europe are primarily to be found in the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, and Italy, whereas methods for sociological prosopography have been developed especially in France during the last decades but also elsewhere, for example in ongoing research in Sweden, Belgium and Denmark. The broad terms methods and tools mentioned above, include issues such as database design, means for categorisation and classification, data collection, data storage and data modelling, as well as available software tools and platforms.

More information

For information on ESF Exploratory Workshops see
www.esf.org/esf_activity_home.php?language=0&domain=0&activity=4
General information on Uppsala University see www.uu.se/english/
Information on Sociology of Education and Culture (SEC) see www.skeptron.uu.se/broady/sec/
Information on Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) see www.kcl.ac.uk/cch/

For information on the workshop in May contact Donald Broady <donald.broady@edu.uu.se> or Monica Langerth Zetterman <monica.langerth@ped.uu.se>.

URL of this page is www.skeptron.uu.se/broady/sec/e-070510-prosop.htm
Created by Donald Broady <broady@nada.kth.se>. Last updated 10 May 2007
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This page is an historical remnant, part of  Skeptron Web Archive