This talk explores how documentation and auditing can serve as powerful tools for positive change by making our research and datasets more transparent. Detailed documentation not only facilitates the effective and responsible reuse of datasets and algorithms but also promotes more inclusive scholarship and ethical research outcomes. Openness, access, and accessibility encompass both technical and ethical dimensions. These principles aim to democratize inclusive access to knowledge and advocate for community engagement to address pressing societal challenges and more specifically, challenges of the field, such as combating the epistemicide of non-Western ways of knowing, decolonizing digital humanities, and addressing (gender) data gaps.
Equity, diversity, and inclusivity are central concerns of the DH – not only as ethical imperatives but also as essential components for producing better, more rigorous scholarship that integrates diverse perspectives. One practical way to address these challenges is through thorough documentation and auditing – particularly of datasets, but also of algorithms and other digital outputs. Documentation can help improve transparency, identify biases or gaps, and provide the context necessary for responsible and equitable reuse, ultimately fostering more inclusive and at the same time more rigorous digital scholarship.
Sarah Lang is Head of Digital Humanities at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin). Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Information Modelling at the University of Graz. Trained in History and Classics in Graz and Montpellier, she completed a PhD on early modern alchemical literature in 2021, combining Digital Humanities and the history of science, for which she received the Bader Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. As convenor of the Empowerment Working Group of the German Digital Humanities Association (DHd), where she is also on the board of directors, Sarah Lang is interested in issues like (gender) data gaps, data feminism, diversity in DH, decolonizing data, data ethics and related topics.
Vortrag im Rahmen des „Digital History“-Forschungskolloquiums
Zeit: Mittwoch, 10. Dezember 2025, 16-18 Uhr
Ort: Zoom-Konferenz (Zugang auf Anfrage oder via Mailingliste)
OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Digital History Berlin (Redaktion) (8. Dezember 2025). Sarah Lang: Tackling Data Gaps through Digital Humanities Practice. Digital History Berlin. Abgerufen am 13. März 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/15anw

