CULTURAL HISTORIES OF SUBSTANCE USES AND E-HISTORY:
CREATING AN INTERNATIONAL MULTILINGUAL RESEARCH NETWORK –
INVITATION TO AN EXPERT MEETING
Toine Pieters & Stephen Snelders (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Email: t.pieters@uu.nl ; s.a.m.snelders@umcutrecht.nl
E-Humanities and E-History, the digitization of historical data and the development
of text and sentiment mining tools to explore these data, bring new challenges and
possibilities for research into the developing field of the history of alcohol and drugs.
More in particular, E-History – when combined with more traditional historical
methods - can stimulate and facilitate the creation of an international comparative and
multilingual project of transnational drug histories. Such a project will tackle major
problems of comparative research: the existence of various language barriers, and the
vast size of the primary sources, especially when these become more and more
available in an age of digitization.
Since a few years we, Toine Pieters and Stephen Snelders, are working at the
Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities
(Utrecht University, The Netherlands) on the exploration and development of EHistory tools. In the discussions, fringes and corridors of the Under Control
conference we would like to talk with those interested about concrete steps in creating
a research network - a network that focuses on comparative cultural histories of
substance use using digital software with an international user base.
We are planning an expert meeting later this year at Utrecht University, to solidify
and deepen the outcomes of these talks. At this meeting we will discuss the necessary
conditions for international research, the methods and tools that will be used, and
possibilities for funding the research. We would like to make an inventory of
researchers interested in future participation in the network, and in attending this
expert meeting.
We invite all people at the conference who are interested in discussing our ideas and
in participating in their development to address us, Toine Pieters and Stephen
Snelders, at the conference. We hope to create an international group of researchers
who enthusiastically but cautiously will explore new avenues in alcohol and drugs
history.
Toine Pieters
Stephen Snelders