Digital Mapping, Digital Humanities, and the Holocaust - Tim Cole

This talk draws on over ten years of experimenting with digital humanities methods – in particular digital mapping – to study the Holocaust. As well as suggesting the ways that a range of digital methods can uncover new knowledge through distant reading the archive, mapping spatial patterns, or digital reading against the grain, the talk also reflects on the limitations of such approaches. It asks when and how we decide to use, and not use, digital tools and methods in researching the Holocaust, and what kinds of new digital tools we might want to develop as well as when we choose to adopt more traditional analog methods.

Tim Cole is Professor of Social History at the University of Bristol and Academic Advisor to the Dan David Prize. Tim’s research ranges widely over social, cultural, environmental and landscape histories – in particular of the Holocaust – alongside an interest in digital humanities and co-produced methodologies. Tim’s most recent books include the co-edited Geographies of the Holocaust (2014), Holocaust Landscapes (2016) and About Britain (2021). He is currently co-writing – with Art Historian Tanja Schult (Stockholm) – a book on the role of monuments in contemporary democracies.

Tuesday, February 4, 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM

Digital mapping, digital humanities and the Holocaust
Michael and Irene Ross Program in Yiddish Studies

Tim Cole (University of Bristol)
Moderator: Todd Presner (UCLA)