The Proceedings of the first conference on Biographical Data in a Digital World (BD2015), which took place on 9 April 2015 in Amsterdam, have been published.
BD2015 brought together an international audience of around 60 researchers from both History and Computer Science 'to discuss the possibilities, limitations and opportunities' for using digital humanities methods to work with digital biographical data.
The conference proceedings include 18 peer-reviewed papers, which explore topics such as bringing biographical data online, analysing biographical data with computational methods as well as visualisation and representation.
Colleagues from the Ghent University-led Transnational Intellectual Collaboration (TIC) initiative presented a paper on 'Visualizing longitudinal data. Rooted cosmopolitans in the Low Countries, 1850-1914'. Using the particular case study of longitudinal data visualisations, the paper demonstrates the potential of TIC-Collaborative's Virtual Research Environment (VRE), consisting of a digital text platform and relational biographic database, to develop targeted research questions about congress participation and transfer of knowledge.
A video of the entire conference is available on the conference website. BD2015, originally started life as a workshop, but is now intended to be the first in a series of conferences, which will take place every two years.