Research in the field of digital humanities, which has been developing for at least a dozen or so years, apart from obvious common features, also has disciplinary and regional specificity. In the field of history and related sciences, its subject matter often includes mass sources produced by the state. Their digitisation, processing and appropriate dissemination serve research purposes as well as the promotion of knowledge and civic attitudes, expressed, for example, in involvement in the protection of local cultural heritage.
Even before the digital revolution in the publication of historical data, there was a shift in the history of the broadly understood human sciences, including statistics and cartography. The pioneers of New Economic History used the analysis of mass sources to verify deeply rooted judgements about economic relations in the past. In the history of geography, researchers such as John Brian Harley saw maps as normative elements, not so much a reflection of social reality as attempts to actively shape it. From this perspective, the mass sources produced in the 19th and 20th centuries are a component of the modern pursuit of order and control. They are an irreplaceable source for studying the processes of knowledge production and the worldview of their creators, but their direct informational value is questionable. The past hidden behind mass sources cannot always be caught up with and verified.
The interdisciplinary conference Measuring the Nation: Collecting, Interpreting, and Digital Processing of Historical Data will provide a platform for discussion between representatives of various disciplines and research traditions working with mass sources on East Central Europe and beyond produced in the 19th and 20th centuries. The meeting of researchers, sometimes representing extremely different approaches to sources, is not intended to develop a uniform position. Instead, it will result in an open catalogue of research questions and practices, taking into account the different sensibilities of historians of ideas and economics, source editors, historical demographers, digital humanities specialists, and cultural studies scholars.
Conference languages:
- English
- Polish
Conference organisers:
- Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences
- The German Historical Institute in Warsaw
- The Masovian Regional Teacher Development Center
Conference committee:
- Dr. Wiesława Duży, Spatial History Lab, Department of Historical Atlas, IH PAN
- Prof. Maciej Górny, Department of the History of Ideas and the History of the Intelligentsia in the 19th and 20th Centuries IH PAN, Deputy Director for Research
- Dr. Tomasz Panecki, Head of Department of Historical Atlas, IH PAN
- Prof. Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, Director of The German Historical Institute in Warsaw
- Prof. Bogumił Szady, Head of Institute for the Historical Geography of the Church in Poland, The John Paul II Catholic Univeristy of Lublin
- Dr. Adrianna Sznapik, Section for the Retrospective Bibliography for the 19th and 20th Centuries, IH PAN
- Dr. Adam Zapała, Head of Digital History Lab, Department of Historical Atlas, IH PAN
Conference Secretary:
- Dr. Michał Raczkowski
Contact details:
email: measuringnation@ihpan.edu.pl
Project financed from the state budget granted by the Minister of Science and Higher Education as part of the Vectors of Science Programme, no project: WNK/SP/0147/2025/01, founding amount: 229 872.50 pln, total project value 289 052.50 pln
Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History Polish Academy of Sciences
Institute of History PAS was founded in 1953 as a research establishment of the Polish Academy of Sciences – a corporation of scholars as well as a community of institutes representing various branches of learning. The Institute is housed in two joined burgher houses, at Warsaw’s Old Town Square (Kołłątaj’s Side): nos. 29 and 31 – “St. Anne’s” (for more see Polish version).
The founder of the Institute and its first director was an eminent historian of the medieval period Professor Tadeusz Manteuffel (1902–1970).
The Institute conducts research on Polish and World history, from the Middle Ages up to the 20th century. Some of the research projects are being conducted in co-operation with other institutions, both in Poland and other European countries.
The Institute consists of 12 departments (zakłady) and 13 sections (pracownie) of different profiles, mainly chronological or thematic. Some of them conduct research on particular regions of Europe or Poland over longer periods of time.
The part of the Institute is a research library open to all historians.
There is also a PhD programme, that has been run by the Institute since 1969 (since some years in the frame of the Anthropos Doctoral School). The Institute has also its own publishing department (Wydawnictwo Instytutu Historii PAN), which since 1991 has been publishing works composed as a part of the Institute’s research plans and journals.
Website: ihpan.edu.pl
The German Historical Institute in Warsaw
The German Historical Institute in Warsaw conducts research on the history of Central and Eastern Europe in a European and global context, with a particular focus on the history of Polish-German relations. It contributes to knowledge transfer between the eastern and western parts of Europe, as well as beyond its borders. This regional mission is supported by local branches in Vilnius and Prague. The GHI’s historical research is interdisciplinary in nature, enabling the analysis of historical and cultural connections in Central and Eastern Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day. The GHI’s research is inspired by a cultural history approach that focuses on historicising phenomena such as violence, space, migration and memory. In addition, the NIH regularly awards scholarships for research stays in Poland, Czechia and Lithuania, as well as for student internships. The institute’s library collection is open to the public. It includes resources on the history of Central and Eastern Europe, especially international literature and academic journals.
Website: www.dhi.waw.pl
The Masovian Regional Teacher Development Center
The Masovian Regional Teacher Development Center is an institution run by the Masovian Voivodeship Government. We are a team of professionals employed in six departments in Ciechanów, Ostrołęka, Płock, Radom, Siedlce, and Warsaw. We create an effective and modern regional teacher development system.
Our mission is to provide comprehensive support to teachers, school and institution principals, and methodological advisors from across Masovia. We offer professionally prepared training based on a thorough assessment of the needs of the community. We promote new pedagogical concepts and innovative curricular and methodological solutions.
Each year, we organize approximately 1,600 diverse forms of development for educational staff. Over 40,000 teachers and school principals utilize our services. We provide process support to several hundred educational institutions in Masovia. To date, 20,000 participants have participated in our key projects. Teacher development is supported by projects funded by the European Union, including: The Professional Teacher Academy, Masovian Talent and Career Centers, and Open Kindergartens have raised approximately 20 millions złoty.
We collaborate with numerous institutions in Poland and abroad, including universities, associations, local government units, educational institutions, and cultural institutions.
Website: https://mscdn.pl/
Conference programme
Warsaw, 29th September – 1st October 2026
29 September, German Historical Institute, Pałac Karnickich,
Aleje Ujazdowskie 39 – 3rd floor, Conference Room
9:30 Registration
9:45 Welcome (Magdalena Saryusz–Wolska)
10:00 Introduction (Maciej Górny)
10:15–12:15 Session 1
Chair: Tomasz Panecki
Maciej Janowski ● Do Facts Give Us Knowledge?
Krzysztof Ostafin ● From Census Tables to Spatial Data: Digitizing and Mapping Socio–Economic Statistics in Galicia (1857–1910)
Anne Knowles ● Historical GIS as a Framework and Springboard for Spatial Stories of the Holocaust
Dariusz Gierczak ● xTree Geografika – a Data Model for Spatial Search of Geographical Names and Administrative Units
discussion
12:15–12:45 Coffee/Tea
12:45–14:45 Session 2
Chair: Wiesława Duży
Morgane Labbé ● Measuring the Polish Nation before the Polish State: Reading Polish Statistics as a Database Compiled from the German, Russian and Austrian Statistical Bureaucracies
Philipp Kröger ● Measuring the Unmeasurable: Statistics, National Indifference, and Population Policies in the German–Polish Borderlands around 1900
Humphrey Southall ● Representing a Changing Nation: Working Geographically with the British Censuses, 1801 to 2021
Piotr Guzowski, Radosław Poniat, Marzena Liedke ● The Fifth Russian Revision of 1795 as a Source for Demographic Research into the Population of the Eastern Territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
discussion
14:45–16:30 Lunch
16:30–17:30 Keynote
Chair: Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
Bartosz Ogórek ● A Proxy or a Delusion? Variable Design in Research on Historical Human Capital
18:15 Conference Dinner
30 September,
German Historical Institute, Pałac Karnickich, Aleje Ujazdowskie 39 – 3rd floor, Conference Room
10:00–11:00 Keynote
Chair:
Catherine Gibson, Anton Kotenko ● Enumerating a Multispecies Romanov Empire: The 1897 Tartu Dog Tax Register and Canine Demography
11:00–11:30 Coffee/Tea
11:30–13:30 Session 3
Chair: Adrianna D. Sznapik
Vojtěch Pojar ● Measuring the Nation’s Body in the Age of Extremes: Mass Gymnastics, Physical Anthropology, and Nationalism, 1910s–1990s
Mikołaj Szołtysek ● Measuring Difference: Family Systems in East–Central Europe between Ideology and Data
Tomasz M. Jankowski ● Early Census Taking of the Jews in East–Central Europe
Sławomir Brzezicki ● From Handbooks to the Dehio Alliance. The Digital Transformation of the “Dehio–Handbuch der Kunstdenkmäler”— from the Traditional Format of National Topographies of Art and Architecture to an International Research Infrastructure
discussion
13:30–15:00 Lunch
15:00–17:30 Session 4
Chair: Magdalena Saryusz–Wolska
Anton Kotenko • Subscribing to Nationalism: Mapping the Social and Territorial Composition of the Ukrainian National Movement in the Romanov Empire, 1906–1911
Victoria Gerasimova ● Beyond Coercion and Conviction: A Database Approach to Jewish Conversion in the Kingdom of Poland (1867–1914)
Edyta Chomentowska, Joanna Kumor–Mielnik ● The Reliability of 19th– and 20th–Century Diocesan Schematisms as a Basis for Reconstruction of the Parish Network
Magdalena Baran–Szołtys ● From Archive to Interface: Galicia and the Re–Mapping of Layered Historical Spaces
Steven Seegel ● Squaring the Triangle: Soil, Sovereignty, and Science in the Belarusian Case of Geographer Arkadz Smolich (1891–1938)
discussion
18:30 Conference dinner
1 October,
Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History Polish Academy of Sciences, Rynek Starego Miasta 31 – Joachim Lelewel Room
9:30–12:00 Session 5
Chair: Bogumił Szady
Gábor Demeter ● Integrating Historic Databases in Hungary: the GISta Hungarorum (1720–1910), the RD1500 (1330–1520) and the Collection of Ottoman Registers (1546–1590)
Ruth Mostern ● Naming Places: Gazetteers and State Power from Print to Pixels
Kristina Wittkamp ● Archives Reconnected: A FAIR Hub for Eastern Europe’s Digitized Heritage: A Hypothèses Blog Bridging Archives, Research & Education (https://archiveome.hypotheses.org/)
Adrianna D. Sznapik, Piotr Jaskulski ● Interpreting Mass Historical Sources with LLMs: The Case of The Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland
Tadeusz Epsztein, Michał Raczkowski ● Large Landownership at the Turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Socio–Economic History and AI
discussion
12:00–12:30 Coffee/Tea
12:30–14:30 Session 6
Chair: Maciej Górny
Elżbieta Nowosielska ● Newspaper Printing in the Prussian Partition between 1865 and 1918
Victoria Gerasimova ● Mapping the Unmapped: Jewish Presence in the SGKP and the Limits of Cultural Heritage GIS
Wiktor Werner ● Measuring Authoritarian Environmental Governance: Interpretable Machine Learning and the Historical Analysis of SB Activities in Late Socialist Poland
Timothy Tambassi ● No Neutral Data: A Perspectivist View of Historical Sources
discussion
14:30–15:00 Closing remarks
15:00–16:00 Farewell Lunch
16:00–18:00 Popular Science Session in Polish
Project financed from the state budget granted by the Minister of Science and Higher Education as part of the Vectors of Science Programme, no project: WNK/SP/0147/2025/01, founding amount: 229 872.50 PLN, total project value 289 052.50 PLN.
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