24 May 2022

On 11 May 2022, the International Institute of Social History hosted the GLOBALISE kickoff for those associated with the project as board and steering committee members and interested researchers and developers working on similar topics. An international group of more than sixty scholars, developers and heritage specialists attended, both on location and online.
The kickoff was a moment to introduce the project aims and approach, and to offer a peek into the first results of the Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), Historical Contextualization, and Semantic Contextualization work packages. Only four months into the project, we have been able to improve the HTR on VOC archives, lay the first stones in a working Natural Language Processing system, and curate several datasets for the historical contextualization of entities.
After the introduction, we asked participants to join one of four thematic tables during two rounds of discussion sessions to exchange expertise on questions that are central to the project. The discussion groups were centered around 1) aligning GLOBALISE with researchers’ needs, 2) the design of the research hub, 3) decolonization and data creation, and 4) data enrichment and modelling. The sessions resulted in very valuable insights, which we would like to highlight and respond to on our blog.
Upcoming: GLOBALISE seminars
To continue exchanging knowledge and experience, we want to host monthly GLOBALISE seminars on various relevant topics from the fall of 2022. The seminars (will) have a relatively open setup with short (10 min.) presentations by a GLOBALISE team member and other experts on the topic, and ample room for questions and discussion.
To give an idea of what that could look like, we have planned two upcoming seminars in May and June:
Entity Linking and (the Trouble of) Historical Data
30 MAY 2022
Bas van den Brink
Researcher | Huygens Institute
Entitity Linking in Structured Data on Slave Trade
Megan Hadasa Leal Causton
Researcher | National Archives
Entity Linking in Structured Data and HTR-ed Archival Series
Gerhard de Kok
Researcher | GLOBALISE
Entity Linking in Structured and Linked Data on VOC Ships
Date: 30 May 2022
Time: 15:00 – 16:30
Location: Spinhuis room 2.18* & Zoom
Entity Modelling and Historical Observations
27 JUNE 2022
Claude Chevaleyre
Researcher | Bonn University
Modelling Observations of Slave Trade and Human Trafficking
Leon van Wissen
Data Engineer | GLOBALISE
Modelling GLOBALISE Pilot Data
Date: 27 June 2022
Time: 15:00 – 16:30
Location: Spinhuis room 2.18* & Zoom
*Huygens Institute: Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185, 1012 DK Amsterdam