GLOBALISE newsletter 6
1 March 2023
New blog post, data, and HTR update
GLOBALISE HTR update

Just before last year’s end, we started the automated transcription process of five million VOC scans. 

The first part of this process was layout analysis, which is now complete!

We are currently in the next phase: transcribing all handwritten characters into machine-readable ones…
 
New dataset publication
We recently published a research dataset on former princely states of Indonesia, created by Hans Hägerdal.

The dataset contains simplified genealogies and orders of succession of various principalities.  

This and other datasets are accessible via the project Dataverse.
Conference news

If you are working on early modern (local) histories of colonialism, and / or forms of forced relocation in the wider Indian Ocean region, you might be interested in the upcoming conference:

“Colonialism, Slavery, and Local Histories in Asia”, 15-16 September 2023, Växjö

Paper proposals are due 3 April.
Blog: "Aligning GLOBALISE with Researchers’ Needs"

In order to align the GLOBALISE research hub with user needs, we have initiated conversations with researchers using the VOC archives.

You can already read about some of our findings in this latest blog post!
 
Get to know us!

At GLOBALISE, we work in a growing team of historians and developers. We would like you to get to know the people behind the project better, which is why we will introduce each of our colleagues in this and upcoming newsletters. Now up: Lodewijk Petram from work package 1: Project Management & User Interaction, and Hennie Brugman from work package 2: Technical Infrastucture.
Lodewijk Petram
I am the project manager of GLOBALISE, which means that I oversee the project’s planning, finances, and broadly everything that happens within the various teams. 
 
Besides my tasks for GLOBALISE, I work as a researcher at the Huygens Institute. The part of that I enjoy most is writing. Soon a new book will be published with a series of stories about ‘ordinary’ Amsterdammers in history that I wrote together with Jelle van Lottum.
 
When I am not working, I prefer to be on a sailboat. But that’s not always possible, so you’re more likely to find me running or cycling in the dunes near Haarlem, and in the winter regularly on the ice rink with my children.
Hennie Brugman
With my team we pick up images, texts, annotations and metadata from our GLOBALISE colleagues, knead those a bit and bring them online in nice and usable ways. This means bulding an interactive research environment, but also offering data online using ‘web API’s’.

It is a challenge to do this by developing software that works for a range of different projects and text collections, but that is part of the fun of the job. And I especially like it when my work actually has some impact on how research is done or how online collections can be used.

And my hobby? I play guitar in two bands.