DISSINET publishes most comprehensive statement of its research agenda

DISSINET has published the final comprehensive statement of our research programme and methodological contributions in the journal Acta Historica Tallinnensia. Entitled ‘Bridging Digital History Methods and Source Criticism: A Research Agenda for the Study of Inquisition Records’, the full article is available online and can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.3176/hist.2025.1.02 (full bibliographical reference: Zbíral, David, Kaarel Sikk, and Robert L. J. Shaw. “Bridging Digital History Methods and Source Criticism: A Research Agenda for the Study of Inquisition Records.” Acta Historica Tallinnensia 31, no. 1 (2025): 46–72. https://doi.org/10.3176/hist.2025.1.02).

This article presents the authoritative statement on the aims and outputs of the ERC-funded DISSINET II, 9/2021-8/2026, covering two major areas of data acquisition (CASTEMO and LLM-powered information extraction), and three major analytical methods (SNA, spatial analysis, computational text analysis). In addition to discussing our innovative contributions to each of these methods, the article presents examples of their applications in recent DISSINET publications and our ongoing research. For instance, we offer a summary of our application of Large Language Models for structured data extraction from inquisition records and discuss how to rigorously express the precision of these LLM results.

Underlying these methodological approaches is our belief in the necessity of incorporating source criticism into data analysis to improve the reliability and depth of digital history. This means actually using data that quantify the conditions of production of sources within formal statistical models rather than relegating such concerns to introductory remarks. In turn, the benefits of this approach go far beyond digital history. As we write in our introduction, ‘[t]his “source criticism 2.0” not only enhances the credibility of digital historical research, but also demonstrates that computational methods should have their firm place at the core, rather than at the margins, of history as a discipline’.

Although the DISSINET II ERC grant will conclude in 2026, the relevance of our methodological innovations in digital history will only increase for historical researchers and humanists of all kinds in coming years. This article conveys that, rather than merely being passive recipients of digital approaches, diligent historians can themselves serve as innovators of digital methods and, in doing so, improve the study of history at large.