Agenda

Archival Studies and AI. Building New Communities of Knowledge for Medieval Documentary Heritage in the Digital Age
Dominique Stutzmann, IRHT/CNRS and Humboldt University Berlin

Seminar in connection with ICARUS Convention #35

Dominique Stutzmann studied history at the university Paris 1 - Sorbonne (PhD 2009), the Ecole nationale des Chartes and the EPHE-PSL (habiliation 2021). He is a research professor (directeur de recherche) with the CNRS and honorary professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He was the PI of the HOME and HORAE projects. His work focuses on scribal cultures in religious communities of the Middle Ages and the implementation of computer vision for the study of medieval handwritings and texts.

 We are witnessing a new information revolution where massively auto-generated content alters the very nature of information, creating alternative realities with profound impacts on our actual world. In this context, medieval charters and registers—foundational sources for European institutional history—are increasingly vulnerable to misuse, their complexities exploited to justify political claims through distorted presentations of the past. This keynote argues that archivists, historians, and computer scientists must urgently create new communities of knowledge capable of maintaining truthful connections to our documentary heritage through renewed, multi-perspective comprehension. Drawing on pioneering projects such as HIMANIS (indexing over 70,000 pages of the Trésor des chartes) and HOME (creating searchable environments for European cartularies), and the developments of EquipEx Biblissima+, this presentation demonstrates how Handwritten Text Recognition, Named Entity Recognition, writer identification, automated dating, and text reuse detection transform archival practice while opening unprecedented avenues for historical analysis. Yet technology alone cannot address our challenges: we must preserve the material authenticity of original documents, ensure transparent conservation and digitization processes that maintain evidential value, and establish robust provenance chains that guarantee the traceability and integrity of both physical and digital archives. This requires reciprocal benefit—medieval diplomatic science informing AI capabilities while computational methods transform our understanding of documentary practices, always grounded in the materiality of archives. The ICARUS network exemplifies the interdisciplinary community essential for this mission. By bridging centuries through digital pathways, we also bridge communities, creating foundations for rigorous scholarship that counters historical misuse and ensures our most sophisticated technologies serve to preserve and illuminate—rather than distort—the documentary evidence of our shared European heritage.

Link to conference programme: https://www.icar-us.eu/en/english-icarus-convention-35-full-programme-is-available/

Registration for online participation: link
ID riunione: 848 4713 7259
Codice d’accesso: 838372

The event is part of the seminar series organized by the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH), Department of Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.