Skip to content
Apply
Stories

Military history in the digital age

Military history in the digital age

Abby Mullen, a doc­toral stu­dent in Northeastern’s his­tory depart­ment, studies early Amer­ican republic and Atlantic his­tory, pri­marily focusing on early 19th-​​century naval his­tory. But from working as a grad­uate fellow in the university’s NULab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science, she’s seen for her­self the trans­for­ma­tive oppor­tu­nity that dig­ital tools present her and other mil­i­tary his­to­rians to bring their research into the 21st century.

The NULab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science is a center for dig­ital human­i­ties and com­pu­ta­tional social sci­ence that sup­ports fac­ulty and stu­dent research projects and trains stu­dents in dig­ital human­i­ties and com­puter sci­ence skills. Mullen’s doc­toral dis­ser­ta­tion will focus on ana­lyzing the U.S. Navy’s diplo­matic and mil­i­tary roles in the Mediter­ranean from 1800 to 1815; dig­ital tools, she said, can be a game-​​changer for research like hers by helping to create dig­ital maps and visu­al­iza­tions of mil­i­tary move­ment or to ana­lyze mas­sive chunks of data that it might tra­di­tion­ally take his­to­rians months or years to pore through.

Let’s say you’re studying battle tac­tics,” Mullen offered, for example. “Through dig­ital map­ping, you can demon­strate mil­i­tary moment in an inter­esting and dynamic way. It’s tough to show that time and space in a book. In this way, dig­ital map­ping tools can be rev­o­lu­tionary for mil­i­tary his­tory research.”

And mil­i­tary his­tory is ripe for uti­lizing these tools, explained Mullen. As she put it, “Mil­i­tary his­tory is very data driven, and the mil­i­tary keeps a lot of records.”

Ear­lier this month, North­eastern hosted a two-​​day work­shop to intro­duce mil­i­tary his­to­rians to two dig­ital methods—social net­work analysis and dig­ital mapping—that can help them advance their own work and forge new col­lab­o­ra­tions with col­leagues. Mullen and Heather Streets-​​Salter, asso­ciate pro­fessor and chair of Northeastern’s his­tory depart­ment, orga­nized the work­shop, which resulted from a part­ner­ship between the NULab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science, the National Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties’ Office of Dig­ital Human­i­ties, and the Society for Mil­i­tary History.

The NEH funded the work­shop, which is part of its Standing Together: The Human­i­ties and the Expe­ri­ence of War ini­tia­tive to pro­mote under­standing of the mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence and to sup­port veterans.

The work­shop included talks from researchers who are already using social net­work analysis and dig­ital map­ping, as well as hands-​​on instruc­tional ses­sions for atten­dees to become more familiar with these dig­ital tools them­selves. Many atten­dees even left with rudi­men­tary dig­ital maps and net­work dia­grams incor­po­rating data from their own work.

On the first day, three pro­fes­sors in a round­table explained how they were intro­duced to dig­ital his­tory. Jeff McClurken, a pro­fessor of his­tory and Amer­ican studies at the Uni­ver­sity of Mary Wash­ington, got his start in dig­ital his­tory on the Valley of the Shadow project, which details life in two Amer­ican com­mu­ni­ties during the Civil War—one in the North, one in the South. He spent 18 months entering in census data between his under­grad­uate and grad­uate studies.

Jean Bauer, asso­ciate director of Princeton University’s Center for Dig­ital Human­i­ties, talked about her time devel­oping the Early Amer­ican For­eign Ser­vice Data­base. She also noted that dig­ital human­i­ties projects not only advance researchers’ work, but can also pro­vide stu­dent vol­un­teers with valu­able learning oppor­tu­ni­ties in a blos­soming field.

One of the great things about dig­ital human­i­ties is that if you can get a project run­ning on your campus, you will need stu­dents to do lots of things, but it also means they will be exposed to won­derful exper­i­ments, the­o­ries, and methods,” she said.

More Stories

Photo of the Capitol Building at night

High stakes for politics, SCOTUS in 2018

01.04.2018
Photo of the crashed truck that was used in the October 31st attack in Manhattan.

Weaponizing Language: How the meaning of “allahu akbar” has been distorted

11.08.2017
Northeastern logo

Why I love studying Spanish

05.29.20
Uncategorized