The Study of Historical Travelogues from a Digital Humanities Perspective: Experiences and New Approaches

Abstract

This article explores how Digital Humanities methodologies can be applied to historical travelogues and highlights the potential of these technologies to provide new insights into historical data. It summarizes the experiences acquired through various research tasks undertaken by the interdisciplinary project team “Digital Editions of Historical Travelogues” (DEHisRe), funded by the German Research Council (DFG) from 2021 to 2024. Based on an iterative case study of handwritten travel journals from the early 19th century, the authors outline the six-step “Life Cycle of Digital Editing”. This circular workflow incorporates best practices in the field while aiming to produce sustainable digital editions of historical travelogues.