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Gerben Zaagsma: Facing the History Machine: Why Histories of Digital History Matter

With the advent of AI in the last few years, historians are grappling with the question of how these new tools will affect historical knowledge production. Yet questioning the impact of new technologies on the profession is hardly new. For decades, historians have raised fundamental epistemological and methodological questions when confronted with new technologies, yet this is often forgotten in favor of a rhetoric of radical newness and future promises. Recent scholarship is beginning to change this, however. As the praxeological turn in the history of the humanities and historiography has taken hold over the past two decades, scholars have begun to investigate the role of technology in the creation of historical knowledge.[1] More recently, the history of digital history has emerged as a new avenue of research.[2] Nonetheless, the strongest interest in the history of digital history manifests in the history of the humanities and the history of knowledge, and not in the field itself.

This talk will explore the genealogies of digital history, set within the broader context of how new technologies have shaped historical research practices and knowledge production since at least the late nineteenth century. As I will argue, attending to the history of digital history should be integral to the field. Fifteen years ago, Christine Borgman noted the lack of historicizing studies of the practices of (digital) humanists, drawing a contrast with the sciences which could advance precisely because there was a disciplinary memory and tradition of building upon accumulated knowledge from the past to advance research in the present.[3] Yet decades of publications, events and debates relating to the human-machine encounter in historical research appear to have had only a limited impact on current debates and practices in our field. To remedy this lack of transmission of accumulated knowledge and expertise and understand what is new in the era of digital history, we need a self-understanding that is genuinely grounded in history.

At the same time, the history of digital history is also a key part of the history of historiography more broadly. Historical research has never only been the work of the mind or a function of shifting historiographical trends and philosophies of history; the investigation of its practices has been a topic since the work of Michel de Certeau in the 1970s, and especially since the late 1990s. However, the question of how technology, not narrowly understood with Schatzberg as tools but as material practices shaped by human agency, fits into that broader investigation of scholarly practices is a newer concern.[4] As such, excavating the history of digital history will not only ground the field historically, but help us better understand how technology has shaped our discipline of History as a whole.


[1] See a special issue of the now defunct German journal Zeitenblicke that probed the connection between (cultures of) technology and the history of historiography: “Historizität, Materialität und Narrativität: Zum Zusammenhang von Technikkultur und Historiographiegeschichte,” Zeitenblicke 10, no. 1 (2011), https://www.zeitenblicke .de/2011/1/; Markus Friedrich, “Vom Exzerpt zum Photoauftrag zur Datenbank. Technische Rahmenbedingungen historiographischer Forschung in Archiven und Bibliotheken und ihr Wandel seit dem 19. Jahrhundert,” Historische Anthropologie 22, no. 4 (2014): 278-298.
[2] For an overview, see: Gerben Zaagsma, “Facing the History Machine: Toward Histories of Digital History,” History of Humanities 9, no. 2 (September 2024): 451–91. Two recent conferences explored histories of digital history: “Revolutionary, Disruptive, or Just Repeating Itself? Tracing the History of Digital History” (23-25 October 2024, German Historical Institute, Paris), see: https://dhdhi.hypotheses.org/category/tagungen-2/dhiha9; ”History of Digital History between East and West” (5-6 February 2026, Centre for Contemporary and Digital History, University of Luxembourg), see: https://zenodo.org/records/18416407. Conference proceedings from both events are currently being prepared for publication in the book series Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics (De Gruyter Brill) https://www.degruyterbrill.com/serial/sdhh-b/html.
[3] Christine L. Borgman, “The Digital Future Is Now: A Call to Action for the Humanities.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 3/4 (2009).
[4] Eric Schatzberg, Technology Critical History of a Concept (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

Vortrag im Rahmen des „Digital History“-Forschungskolloquiums
Zeit: Mittwoch, 15. April 2026, 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. April 2026). Gerben Zaagsma: Facing the History Machine: Why Histories of Digital History Matter. Digital History Berlin. Abgerufen am 21. April 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/1615b


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