Time: 1:30pmVenue: Foreign & Commonwealth Office
How does the current ‘digital revolution’ compare to technological change in earlier periods, from the birth of radio and television to the arrival of the fax machine and photocopier?
How are digital technologies changing the methodological and conceptual terrain of political history? And how should we preserve and analyse ‘born-digital’ sources, from central government emails to activist tweets? In short, if digital technologies have changed politics in our time, how are they changing political history?
This event brought early-career and more established historians together with archivists, policymakers and digital specialists to consider these and other questions about the relationship between politics, digital technologies and the writing of history.
The event, hosted in partnership between the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary University of London and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Historians, forms part of a wider programme of activity on the theme of Rethinking Contemporary British Political History, which is funded by a British Academy’s Rising Star Engagement Award held by Dr Helen McCarthy at Queen Mary University of London.
Blogs from this event:
Dr Helen McCarthy: Contemporary Political History: Mapping the Road Ahead
Shane Dillon: The Digital Archive: Challenges for Historians
Programme
Panel One: Digital Politics and Government in Historical Perspective
Keynote speaker: Russell Davies, writer and strategist
Respondent: Dr James Ellison, Reader in International History, Queen Mary University of London
Chair: Dr Helen McCarthy
This panel explored the ways in which digital technologies have changed and are changing the practices of democratic politics and government, and what implications this might have for historical narratives of British politics and political culture.
• What do we mean when we talk about the ‘digital state’ or ‘digital democracy’?• Where have digital technologies made the greatest impact on political practices and identities? Where have they made the least?• Have the effects of the digital ‘revolution’ been overstated? What can we learn from earlier technological revolutions, when seeking to document and evaluate the political consequences of present-day digital technologies?
Panel Two: Digital Politics and the Practice of History
Speakers:
Dr Katrin Weller, Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Dr James Baker, Lecturer in Digital History, University of Sussex
Professor Patrick Salmon, Chief Historian, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Simon Demissie, Head, Modern Domestic Records, The National Archives
Chair: Dr Robert Saunders, Lecturer in Modern British History, Queen Mary University of London
This session focused on to the practical challenges of preserving, archiving and making accessible ‘born-digital’ sources alongside more conventional, paper-based sources. It reflected upon the related question of how digitisation shapes the type of history it is possible to teach and write.