Time Traveller

📢Calling all Text-as-Data researchers ⭐️CfP Text-as-Data session: Narratives, Culture and Perceptions💥World Economic History Congress,📍Lund 2025. CfP deadline⏰16th Nov '24⌛️. @ellliottt @phinifa @essobecker

Introducing the forthcoming special issue on "Comparative Development in colonial Africa" in @rhi_ihr edited jointly with @DacilJuif & Kate Frederick at the @AfEconHis Meeting 2024 @SapienzaRoma, including 5 papers on Portuguese 🇦🇴🇲🇿 French 🇸🇳🇧🇯🇲🇱 and British African 🇿🇲 colonies.

@MoradiAlexander presenting how narratives from European- Africans encounters develop, diffuse and persist over hundreds of years. Using text-as-data, and innovative methods from social psychology. Joint with @UbuntR314 and @Edkerby. Great audience at the @AfEconHis. #textasdata

The team - @coetzeelauren and @KarinPallaver - presenting new work on pre-modern currency areas @AfEconHis. Frontier research using BIG DATA to show how Africa was more integrated than previously thought. Joint with @MoradiAlexander, @ale_decola and @Edkerby

What to learn from 712 journeys of 605 travellers to Africa? Article summary by @Edkerby @MoradiAlexander & Odendaal in @EcHistSocReview : African Time Travellers: What can we learn from 500 years of written accounts? – African Economic History Network (aehnetwork.org)

@TimeTravelData presentation at @AfEconHis Conference #AEHN #LEAP

Fascinating work: 230,000 pages of travel diaries exploring 500 years of Africa's economic history. In a way, a wake-up call on the key role of the observer (bias) at generalizing historical knowledge. @EcHistSocReview

Among the most exciting datasets and innovative approaches in (African) Economic History asking new questions by @MoradiAlexander & @Edkerby

@EcHistSocReview @Edkerby @MoradiAlexander @UbuntR314 @StellenboschUni @LEAP_SU @unibz_news @BERcoza Building the database since 2018, we now have ~3,000 traveller to Africa from AD 1040 thru 1900.

@EcHistSocReview @Edkerby @MoradiAlexander @UbuntR314 @StellenboschUni @LEAP_SU @unibz_news @BERcoza @TimeTravelData is always learning and pushing the computational frontier. Dairies are now machine translated from 9 different languages. Results are promising.

Now on Early View: 'African time travellers: What can we learn from 500 years of written accounts?' By Edward Kerby, Alexander Monradi and Hanjo Odendaal. @Edkerby @MoradiAlexander @UbuntR314 @StellenboschUni @LEAP_SU @unibz_news @BERcoza onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…

Had a fantastic time visiting @Harvard Houghton’s special collections library, collecting some more data for @TimeTravelData @LEAP_SU 📈📖

LEAP's @Edkerby & co-authors use computational methods to uncover new perspectives Kerby, E., Moradi, A., and Odendaal, H., 'African time travellers: What can we learn from 500 years of written accounts?', The Economic History Review, (2024), pp. 1-38. doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13…

This will be a fascinating @EcHistSoc Culture and Narratives session (6th April, 0900 - 1030, room - Harvard 403) with @Melanie_Xue and @MarvinSuesse.

We can also compare adjective frequencies for descriptions of Villains, Victims, and Hero's across the corpus. European hero's are adventurous, but African hero's are loyal.

Come see @alexmoradi present a new paper on “Narratives from European-African Encounters (1400 - 1900)” at the @EcHistSoc. A 🧵 on this fascinating, ground-breaking research.