Workshop on Content Analysis for Digital Humanities

This half-day workshop offers an introduction to computational methods for analyzing historical and literary texts. As large-scale digitalization and advances in OCR technology make vast textual archives increasingly accessible, researchers require scalable approaches that go beyond traditional close reading.

Drawing on the concept of Distant Reading (Moretti, 2013), the session will explore techniques such as document classification, keyword detection, topic modelling, semantic mapping, and the application of transformer-based models like LLaMA. Example corpora include historical English texts (1500–2000) and the works of Charles Dickens.

The session will combine conceptual input with hands-on exercises. Participants are warmly encouraged to bring their own datasets and research questions, which may be incorporated into the session. Basic knowledge of R or Python is helpful but not required.

To have your data or questions considered for use during the workshop, please email: gerold.schneider@es.uzh.ch by June 6, 2025.

When / Wann: June 13, 2025, 09:00 - 13:30

Where / Wo: University of Zurich, KOL-H-317 (3rd floor), Rämistrasse 71, 8006 Zurich 

Language / Sprache:  English

Registration / Anmeldung: Link (The registration deadline is June 6, 2025.)

Organisation: DSI Community Digital Humanities in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Gerold Schneider

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