28. bis 30. September 2022
Universität Graz, Zentrum für Informationsmodellierung – Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities

As early as the 1970s, diplomatics, i.e. research on mediaeval documents, noticed the benefits of the computer for the indexing and editing of mediaeval charter collections. In the following decades, numerous relevant research projects were initiated that explored and clarified the potential of a connection between digital humanities and the methods of historical auxiliary sciences. They have found expression in the series of conferences on the topic of « Digital Diplomatics » (in particular Munich 2007, Naples 2011 and Paris 2013), in which the digitisation of charters, their publication on the web, and the digital analysis of document corpora in cooperation between archives, diplomatics, historians and computer scientists were discussed.

The ERC Advanced Grant project « From Digital to Distant Diplomatics » takes up this tradition and wants to take stock of the different projects and approaches to the topic of « digital diplomatics » with the conference « Digital Diplomatics 2022 ».

The international conference in Graz is intended to offer all scholars interested in this complex of topics the opportunity for discussion and exchange, from questions about digital support in the formal and content analysis of documents, to the planning and implementation of digitisation projects in archives and libraries, to the future direction of this new research field.

In principle, the organisers of this conference welcome all contributions from the broad field of digital diplomatics, but would like to draw particular attention to the following topics:

• ●  digitisation and web presence of document corpora
• ●  digital edition of charters
• ●  the usefulness of digital images for diplomatics, especially for the study of graphic symbols, layout, authentication and palaeography
• ●  Computer vision with mediaeval and early modern charters
• ●  Machine learning and digital diplomatics
• ●  Computer linguistic and stylometric analysis of charter texts
• ●  The problem of mass, e.g. digital diplomatics and late mediaeval charters
• ●  Advanced statistical methods in diplomatics
• ●  Digital sphragistics
• ●  Digital diplomatics in university teaching
• ●  New diplomatic insights gained with digital methods
• ●  How can diplomatics open to other disciplines by digital means?
• ●  The future of digital diplomatics Proposals for posters or talks (minimum 500, maximum 750 words with bibliographical references and short biographical information on the authors) are welcome by e-mail at: didip@uni-graz.at The conference committee consists of Georg Vogeler (chair), Tamas Kovacs, Daniel Luger, and Anguelos Nicolaou. It will decide on acceptance of the proposals in consultation with the scientific advisory board of the ERC project DiDip. Deadline for abstracts: 3rd July 2022

In the event of an invitation to speak, the organisers may contribute towards travel and accommodation costs. Please provide an estimate of your support needs with your application.

Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes of speaking time and may be given in English, French, German or Italian.

We plan to publish written versions of the conference papers in the context of the journal « Archiv für Diplomatik, Schriftgeschichte, Siegel- und Wappenkunde » (AfD), which has been published annually since 1956, in a single blind review process. Paper submission is due by end of 2022.

Further information at: https://didip.hypotheses.org/conference-2022