Meet the Grantee: Thomas Wallnig

You have mentioned some of the disciplines you work with: data science, history didactics; you are a historian and literary scholar and have the linguistic turn in mind. To what extent do other disciplines play a role in your collaboration?

SB: We will also include the visual worlds of the 17th century, i.e. work with multimedia text. This gives rise to beautiful media studies questions, e.g. what data do we get from the historical maps of the 16th century and how did they influence the image of history? Part of the relevance of what we do is also to create sensitivity for digital data and how it comes about. I keep asking Thomas: What is the programme actually doing now? Why are there now 20 words and not eleven, or what happens if I change that now? Or what does this sequence of words mean? So all these critical questions map the educational process of how we experience things and how we can interpret them.

TW: Operating with the traditional academic disciplines doesn’t really work for us. We actually work transdisciplinarily. Network analytics are mathematical methods that measure sets of connections within an abstract network. And they are used in very different disciplines: in molecular biology, in engineering, in the social sciences. In other words, they all work with a certain basic toolbox of computational methods, but apply them differently. At the same time, these methods can calculate not only with people or genes, but also with words. And here we include computational linguistics, one still actually has the same toolkit, but applies it in a different field, which translates the individual elements of the computation into a different epistemic system. In this sense, we are talking on two levels: one, on the level of basic mathematical-statistical assumptions, and two, on a fruitful transdisciplinary exchange between fields of application, which, however, do not necessarily have to correspond to academic disciplines.

So I am constantly learning to formalise problems and to assess the functioning of the software. With Gephi and network analysis, I can explain this relatively well. With topic modelling, we’re both still stuck on the question of how probabilistic models of word co-occurrences are generated. And then we also resort to tutorials on YouTube (laughs). It’s a laboratory situation in which experimental trials take place that we always have to recalibrate.

Now you are working for the project with digital data that exist independently of time and place: What does international researcher mobility mean to you in particular? It was and still is very limited; and the major research sponsors are thinking about how to continue exchange programmes. What does it mean for you as a researcher to be mobile?

SB: For me as a historian, it has always been important to encounter the objects I deal with in the original, in the archive, in museums, in historical buildings. It is also important in didactics to convey how central the original encounter is. There is a difference between looking at a photograph of Cologne Cathedral and standing on the Cologne Cathedral Plateau and then seeing the five-storey houses next to it, and then thinking about what it was like in the 13th century. There is no substitute for the original on site.

Through Covid, we have learned to use digital tools. For humanities scholars, however, the social custom of conferences remains very relevant, not so much the lectures themselves, but the informal encounters. The Covid crisis is certainly a catalyst for some developments, but the high relevance of the term ‘authenticity’ in today’s historical culture shows that the aura of the original, which conveys this authenticity, is vital.

TW: I am from the Erasmus generation and I can only confirm that the high acceptance of the European Union in this generation in a certain segment of society is absolutely connected to mobility. Researcher mobility is essential and, in my view, a prerequisite for the academic landscape to be and remain a safe space for a certain form of knowledge-based, evidence-based cosmopolitanism, despite many problems. In view of the growing counter-movements, we would do well to cultivate this.

But we have to be careful that it doesn’t get tattered, that it doesn’t escalate, in the illusion of being able to be connected everywhere with everyone at all times. Cosmopolitanism is of very little use in the dominant power structures of the university at home – mobility, i.e. a professorship elsewhere, yes, but absence through a longer fellowship, that is already difficult.

That’s why I find this Short Term Grant very pleasant, because it offers enough space, as it is different on site: you enjoy a longer process of developing thoughts. You pick them up again the next day. It is a concentrated collaboration with a colleague who is committed personally and institutionally. Thanks to Stefan, we have been able to have many interesting conversations with people here on site who take time and are interested. And the upcoming workshop is a nice opportunity to bring that together. This is really productive, it’s structured and output-driven and you don’t just meet for a nice chat. On the other hand, you’re not married either (laughs).

SB: For me as a host, the Short Term Grant is also a great opportunity to take a significant step forward and enter new territory. In everyday life, I don’t allow myself to experiment. Now I can dive into the Digital Humanities. Especially in my position as Academic Director, where I don’t have the benefit of a sabbatical. If we worked purely digitally, the daily routine at the home university would be too present.

TW: Before the Covid crisis hit, many colleagues suffered from an ever faster spiral of conferences and meetings. That’s why I think it’s very good to create productive situations for cooperation on site, to bring sources and work them out together. Instead of a conference, we do a workshop, work on and discuss something and then meet for a beer with colleagues who are also interested. It takes out the toxic and tedious, and I think it’s great when there are formats like the Short Term Grant that support that.

When we applied in October 2020, there was absolutely no telling what the next year would be like. And I am very happy that we caught a window with low incidence and good travel conditions. We enjoy even more the flexibility of the Humboldt Centre allowing the second stay in October.

SB: I’m also really looking forward to continuing in October. We can thematically expand and think about the whole project on the previous digital basis. We already have much clearer contours, but that’s the best thing about science: that it always continues.​

The aforementioned workshop "Digital Tools and Methods for Textual Analysis: An Introduction" will take place on 4 October, 13:45-16 h (Zoom: access will be deposited on this website on the day of the event - interested parties are cordially invited!

The Grantee and his host

Thomas Wallnig studied History and Italian at the Universities of Graz, Pisa, Turin and Vienna, where he habilitated in 2016 in Modern History. From there, he led and leads several major research projects and international research networks in the fields of pre-modern history of ideas and science as well as digital humanities. In 2021, in addition to the Humboldt Short Term Grant at the University of Bayreuth, he also held visiting professorships at the Universities of Padua and Klagenfurt.

Stefan Benz studied history, German language and literature, education and psychology for the teaching profession at grammar schools in Erlangen and Vienna. After the second state examination, he worked for six years in the Bavarian school service and did his doctorate at the University of Erlangen on the historiography of Catholics in the early modern period – a topic that has since led to a huge amount of data... In 2001, he began teaching history didactics at the University of Bayreuth and habilitated in this subject and history theory at the University of Passau.