Peter Webster

Interesting discussion going on at the British Library's Open and Engaged event for 2026: first session, on building cultural heritage infrastructures that can withstand the onslaught of those training AI models. #OpenEngaged Programme at openscholarship.gitbook.io/open-and-eng...

🎉 I am delighted to announce that the 2026 Richard Deswarte Prize in Digital History is awarded to to Galey, Forget, Allen, and Viglianti for their work ‘ApertureScience.Com: A Critical Edition’, Scholarly Editing (2025). Full details here ➡️ ihrdighist.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2026/10/2026...

Eldest safely deposited at university yesterday, and today he sends me an image of his first library card. #Parent-Librarian-Feelings

TFW you find a new piece of historical work, welcome and valuable and in general well executed, that ignores your own (very relevant) work.

Just finished this. I think I need a little lie down, or a stiff drink, or something. And I can't tell you why without spoilers.

I worked on the 14th floor of this building, and spent many happy minutes slowly riding the paternoster lift. Faster than the stairs, less waiting than with the lift.

Hive mind: is it just me, or has Bluesky limited how many of your Likes it will show to those made in the last six months?

This feels as good a time as any to announce that in Sept I’ll be moving to Cambridge Digital Humanities as Professor of DH and Deputy Director. Excited for the new challenge, but also sad and thankful for the amazing colleagues I’m leaving.

It's taken a while, but there's now an Open Access version of an essay of mine (the publisher offered no route to OA, with or without embargo). Come and satisfy all your canon law history needs: 'Parliament and the law of the Church of England, 1943–74 peterwebster.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

Interesting paper at #susDH @ukiedh.bsky.social on designing DH project websites as static outputs for long-term sustainability. As an example: the Russian Visual Arts Project, my first job, which closed in 2003: still looking exactly the same save for the search. www.dhi.ac.uk/rva/index.html

Very pleased to be at this conference today. Is there a hashtag @ukiedh.bsky.social ?

www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiou... News of the 2026 Evangelical Studies Program online conference. Join us!

Summary version at peterwebster.me/2019/01/29/p...

As I have more time now for interesting things, I got this out and dusted it off a bit. websterresearchconsulting.com

The University of Southampton Summer Art Exhibition "Exploration: Beyond Boundaries" is open! Come and see my art piece "Submerged Worlds" - tactile 3D-printed seascapes you can explore through touch as well as sight! 📍 Level 4 Gallery, Hartley Library 📅 3 June - 3 Aug More info: tiny.cc/adk4101

Can you hold a dataset in your hands? It turns out you can! In my latest post for Inside Digital Scholarship, I explore data physicalisation and show how GEBCO data can be turned into a tangible raised-relief globe. Read it here 👇 tinyurl.com/bak6m6jm #DataPhysicalisation #DigitalScholshi

*sees the university managerialism discourse* *contemplates, again, expressing some Unpopular Views* *closes laptop*

This, really, is the crux of the issue, and it seems a peculiarly British problem.

New paper! By Naomi Korn, @smitakheria.bsky.social & me: "Orphan Works, Mass-Digitisation of Cultural Heritage, and Licensing Barriers: Lessons from the United Kingdom’s Experience" - how Brexit led to the deletion of @britishlibrary.bsky.social's Spare Rib resource or.niscpr.res.in/index.php/JI...

📢 Just over two weeks left to nominate your work or work you love for the 2026 Richard Deswarte Prize in Digital History ihrdighist.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2021/12/the-richard-deswarte-prize-in-digital-history/ #dhist

Agreed, and to assume that whichever constituency is chosen will simply troop to the polls to ratify his coronation seems rather heroic.

@ryancordell.org on DHers who build 'technological imagination. Specific platforms, applications, and even coding languages come and go, but a technological imagination is able to abstract a problem—whether intellectual, professional, or personal—and formulate a plan' ryancordell.org/research/ane...

There's information about the kind of (small) projects I can help with, with examples, at websterresearchconsulting.com/services/

I have no idea whether the figure of *fifty* institutions on the brink is accurate, but it wouldn't be a surprise. It would be good if Labour would stop fighting for the steering wheel and watched the road, as this has been evident for many months. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I had Reform in mind here, but (IMO) a lot also depends on which Green Party shows up to govern: old-style "think global, act local" environmental activism, or something closer to Corbyn's Labour.

Lib Dems control more English councils than the Conservative Party, the Green Party and Reform UK. Not that you'd know this from yesterday's coverage. The media's lack of curiosity and imagination and its inability to explore beyond the populist noise is as depressing as it is boringly predictable.

Lots of English voters are about to find out what happens to local services when under the control of politicians interested only in gestures and not in the difficult, boring and unfashionable business of local government.

⏰ Just over a month remaining to submit your nominations for the Deswarte Prize in Digital History, the prize that celebrates the best of digital history internationally. Full info here: ihrdighist.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2021/12/the-... #dhist

Did you know? If you like Gephi and find it useful, you can support us by making a small donation here: opencollective.com/gephi This allows the developers to meet more often to keep the software moving forward. Thank you to everyone who supports us! 🙏

It's a good night to read this excellent piece, on the Orban regime's network of financial support for the nationalist right in Britain. For many on the radical right, the tills are about to stop ringing. democracyforsale.substack.com/p/orbans-brits

i hope the white house sends vance to campaign for Reform in britain

one immediate dramatic consequence of the Hungarian result: Magyar has promised to repair relations with the EU and unblock a €90bn EU loan for Ukraine

For almost a century generations of scholars and thinkers have tried to understand why the Germans sleepwalked into disaster. Future generations will focus on a different case.

"We do not know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky."

I keep checking the news to see "how the war is going". Then I remember: since there's no plan, no "progress" can be made. Silly me.

New working paper out: "Open Maps: New Research Directions and Workflows for Digitized Historical Cartographic Material" led by Vincent Baptist & Jules Schoonman (TU Delft) #dh #maps openmapsmeeting.nl/publications...

Sadly I won't be able to attend this, but it looks very interesting.

Possibly the most interesting (and chastening) piece I've seen so far on the impact of tools like Claude Code on digital history: "the fig leaf of methodological difficulty won’t cover a lack of interpretative results much longer" lincolnmullen.com/blog/behind-...