Can historical research benefit from AI? Since 2020 Nina Koefoed has been working on the Transkribus platform, using AI to train “models” that can read and transcribe handwritten Danish texts from the 18th century. In this talk, she will present the research project, questions and archival material that led her to work with Transkribus in the first place, and reflect on what she have gained in this project, as well as how it has led to the current project, where she and her team are using Transkribus to transcribe 300,000 pages of 18th century petitions sent to the absolute king in Denmark. Nina Koefoed will give examples of the research questions that can be answered when these sources are made searchable and discuss how AI might change the way we work as historians and the questions we can ask. She will also explain how she and her team have worked with Transkribus, how the model is trained, and how it can be used by others and by individual researchers and students.

Nina Javette Koefoed is Associated Professor in History at Aarhus University and coordinator of LUMEN – Center for the Study of Lutheran Theology and Confessional Societies. She has published extensively on Lutheran Danmark and early modern Households and was the PI of the project Making the 18th century accessible funded by The Carlsberg Foundation. Above all this she is the Head of The Department of History and Classical Studies at Aarhus University.

The seminar is jointly organized together with the Lund Center for the History of Knowledge (LUCK), the early modern seminar, and the higher seminar.

Please use this zoom-link: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/2108272169

Everyone is most welcome!