6th Digital History in Sweden Conference: Unboxing Digital Methods, Practices and Public Engagement

Whether or not it is a conscious choice, most digital history projects involve, engage, or inform the public in some way. This can be anything from crowdsourcing or creating a digital educational resource, to inadvertently enabling easy access to newly digitized material for everyone – not just researchers. Historians need to be aware of the potential of the digital in the dissemination and collection of historical knowledge, as well as the vital role they play in providing a context for local histories.

Fusing the sharing of memories and amateur history-writing online – where it can easily be disseminated – means that historians have started to be more aware of and open to the public’s role in collecting memories and sources, building networks, and enabling cross-border, non-Eurocentric ways of writing history. The internationalization of access to sources and histories leads to academic and amateur historians gaining insights into regions that previously were inaccessible, yet infrastructures for citizen participation remain limited to only a few. In many ways, digital methods, practices, and public engagement put a spotlight on history’s relationship with collective memory and how interactive practices, collaborations, and co-creation affect both the field and the public in general.

Submit an abstract by 1 September 2024.

The conference is organized by the Division of History at the Department of Cultural Sciences, with support from the Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and Digital Humanities at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Linnaeus University.

Keynote

Pippa Virdee, "The Digital Afterlife of the 1947 Partition".
Professor of Modern South Asian History, De Montfort University.

Jacob Orrje, "Re-thinking the Crowd. AI, Lay Expertise, and the Sourcing of Historical Data".
Researcher in the History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University and Digital Historian of Science at the Centre for History of Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, PI of the project Mapping the geographies of early modern mining knowledge. A digital history of the study tours of the Swedish Bureau of Mines, 1691–1826.

Call for papers

6th Digital History in Sweden Conference invite paper, panel, roundtable, and poster proposals on any aspect of digital history, while we especially encourage presentations related to the conference theme, Unboxing Digital Methods, Practices and Public Engagement. Submissions presenting project ideas or sketching emerging work are welcome. Presentations should be circa 10–20 minutes long, in English or in a Scandinavian language. Posters will be on display for the duration of the conference. The conference will be held over two days, on-site at Linnaeus University (Växjö campus) with a limited capacity for remote presentations. There is no conference fee.

Submissions must contain:

Paper/panel/poster title,
An abstract of 200–300 words,
Your name, affiliation, and e-mail address.

Panel proposals must include the titles of all papers and the names of all participants. Indicate if you wish to present in person or remotely.

E-mail abstracts to Sara Ellis Nilsson and Eleonor Marcussen at digitalhistory2024@lnu.se no later than 1 September 2024.

Registration

There is no registration fee.

Travel to and within Växjö

Travel to Växjö

There are a number of different ways to travel to Växjö. You can either take the train to Växjö Central or travel by air to Växjö Småland Airport.

If you travel by train to Växjö you will reach Växjö Central located in the city centre. Travelling by train from Stockholm Central to Växjö Central takes roughly 3.5 hours.

If you instead choose to travel by air, you can choose to travel either from Bromma Stockholm Airport or Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to Växjö Småland Airport. You can also reach Växjö via flight to Copenhagen Airport/Kastrup and connecting direct train to Växjö Central (roughly 2.5 hours).

Travel in Växjö
For travel from Växjö Central or Växjö Småland Airport to Linnaeus University we recommend either bus or taxi.

By bus
When travelling by bus from Växjö Central to Linnaeus University, bus number 3, direction “Universitetet”, is the best option. However, there are also other bus routes that pass by one of the university’s bus stops or bus stops nearby, for instance, route number 1 and 5, which take you to Teleborg Centrum, some 8–10 minutes’ walk from the university’s campus.

Bus number 4 will take you from Växjö Småland Airport to Växjö Central where you can change to bus to get to Linnaeus University.

Bus tickets are purchased either on the bus with a debit card or you can download the travel app “Länstrafiken Kronoberg” and purchase your ticket in the app, which will give you a 10% discount on your ticket. You use your debit card to pay in the app.

Click here to perform a search on Länstrafiken Kronoberg:
https://www.lanstrafikenkron.se/en

By bicycle
In case you prefer a bicycle, many hotels can offer this. It takes roughly 20 minutes with a bicycle from the city centre to Linnaeus University’s campus.

By taxi
Most taxi companies start from Södra Bantorget at World Trade Center which means you can find available taxis here.

By car
There is a relative shortage of parking spaces on campus and all are subject to a charge. Parking spaces are marked on the map below.

Here you will find a map of Linnaeus University in Växjö: https://lnu.se/en/meet-linnaeus-university/contact-and-visit-us/

About Linnaeus University

Linnaeus University is a creative and international knowledge environment that promotes curiosity, creativity, companionship and utility. More than 44,000 students are registered at Linnaeus University.

Linnaeus University is located in Växjö and Kalmar and offers 150 degree programmes and 1,300 single-subject courses. Linnaeus University was established in 2010 through a merger between Växjö University and Kalmar University College.

With some 2,100 employees and 44,000 students it is a modern university with Småland as its base and the world as its arena. Studying and working at Linnaeus University involves being part of an environment that is characterised by knowledge and development. Students acquire new knowledge and learn to have a critical approach. Researchers make new discoveries that can bring change to our society. Employees share stories of a workplace with both challenges and opportunities. Linnaeus University is a university where people can reach their full potential.

Learn more about Linnaeus University.

The 6th Digital History in Sweden Conference is a sustainability-assured meeting in accordance with Linnaeus University’s guidelines for sustainable events. These guidelines are linked to the 17 global goals in Agenda 2030 and comprise the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, the social, and the environmental.

Learn more about Linnaeus University´s sustainable events here.