April 27th through April 30th, Historical Science Days have been held at South Ural State University. For more than 10 years now, this event has been bringing together young History scientists, students, postgraduates, and accomplished and renowned specialists in humanities.
The “Humanities Research in the Digital Era” Science-to-practice Conference became the forum’s central event.
“The Historical Science Days that we hold now differ from those 10 years back,” shared the event’s organizer and Head of the Department of Russian and International History, Candidate of Sciences (History) Svetlana Krivonogova. “Thanks to the efforts of the leadership of the Institute of Media, Social Sciences and Humanities, we open a Laboratory of Digital History this year. It will become not just a starting point for this field of study at our university, but will also help anchor the already established practices. The conference aims at demonstrating which cross-disciplinary, mathematical methods, digital technologies, and examples of using artificial intelligence are already being implemented in historical research at SUSU today.”
Director of the Institute of Media, Social Sciences and Humanities (IMSSH), Doctor of Sciences (Philology) Lidiya Lobodenko talked about how digital technologies of eye tracking help monitor the attention focus among readers and viewers, how those work in media content studying, as well as in museum and historical research.
“Museum studies, perception of cultural heritage, analysis of the historical memory and of its reconstruction methods – all of that is a wide range of research where eye tracking can be used,” explained IMSSH Director Lidiya Lobodenko. “There are special tools for that, for instance: tracking glasses that help dynamically monitor the attention focus of a person moving in space, like walking through a museum hall. This does not cancel traditional historical methods, but rather opens new horizons before researchers.”
Vladimir Kostomarov, Candidate of Sciences (History) and Director of the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tyumen presented his scientific report before the audience.
Young scientists also delivered their reports at the conference.
Egor Vasiuchkov, research fellow at the Institute of History and Archaeology of the Ural Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences shared on how databases creation and mathematical statistics methods help archaeologists reveal new patterns, such as bone composition in radioisotopic assay.
Student of the SUSU IMSSH Artem Rytchenkov talked about how he had used computer-and-statistical methods to analyse the contents of the file of “Katorga i ssylka” (“Penal Colony and Exile”) Soviet revolutionist periodicals released in the 1920s-1930s. Student of the SUSU IMSSH Vsevolod Sunegin had used digital methods to process “books of regular citizens” of the 18th-19th centuries and had obtained data on the social category of soldiers and their share among other householders in Chelyabinsk of that time. Both works had been performed under the guidance of Professor of the Department of Russian and International History, Doctor of Sciences (History) Igor Sibiriakov.
The Historical Science Days will continue. Students will participate in the traditional game party (a historical games competition), lectures and master classes from Doctor of Sciences (History) Igor Narskii and Doctor of Sciences (History) Boris Rovnyi, as well as in presentation of grants projects and Master’s degree programmes.