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Bernoulli-Euler-Digital with RDF-star-based Digital Edition of Jacob Bernoulli’s Travel Diary, Reisbüchlein

Research Project | 6 Project Members

Bernoulli-Euler Digital application is a notable expansion of the Bernoulli-Euler Online (BEOL) project containing an interactive region-based digital edition of Jacob Bernoulli’s travel diary, Reisbüchlein, created using the RDF-star and SPARQL-star technologies. This platform serves as a dedicated research hub, focusing on exploring early modern mathematics and science. Its primary objective is to seamlessly integrate the extensive works and correspondences of the prominent members of the Bernoulli dynasty and the influential mathematician Leonhard Euler.

The knowledge graph of the Reisbüchlein edition is constructed using the JourneyStar ontology, an open-access ontology we developed to thoroughly and efficiently represent travel data by connecting metadata information such as dates and sources of information to the graph's edges. The ontology and its SHACL shapes, necessary for validating the graph data, are open-access on GitHub. The edition is created semiautomatically by using the textToRDFGraph pipeline to extract information from diary entries and represent the textual content in a machine-readable format. For this purpose, transcriptions generated using Transkribus and verified by the project team are used as the pipeline's input. This ontology-driven NLP pipeline retrieves the information from unstructured text and enriches the edition’s RDF-star graph with named entities and relations found between the entities. The RDF resources representing locations and persons given in the text are connected to their representation on the Wikidata and DBpedia repositories to allow the discovery of the information by following the nose principle. Thus, instead of creating yet another data silo of locations and persons, the named entities of the edition are connected to the third-party repositories and data is retrieved from these repositories upon access through federated searches. For example, for journey visualizations available on the web application, the coordinates of the origin and destination of journey stages are retrieved dynamically from Wikidata and used to create web-based visualizations.

The digital edition of all entries in the Reisbüchlein manuscript is presented in the Bernoulli-Euler Digital application with the facsimile of the pages, page transcriptions, interactive regions of the facsimile, and region transcriptions. The transcriptions contain all text markups and links to embedded named entities stored in the triplestore as standoff markups. This allows for analysis of the information using SPARQL, which enables queries for the texts about the embedded markups. For example, the user can query for all pages mentioning Geneva or all texts in which a certain phrase is written in italics.

Jacob Bernoulli described each of his journeys as an entry in Reisbüchlein with information about the duration, accommodations, events, means of transportation, costs, etc. The journeys are represented as RDF resources, with all main statements describing the journeys. The metadata are all added to the graph's edges with RDF-star statements. Upon accessing an entry through the web application, it retrieves the journey information from the triplestore vis SPARQL-star queries and displays it in a user-friendly form.

Dissertation Elmiger: Die Entdeckung, Kategorisierung und Rahmung von isländischen Volkserzählungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert

PhD Project | 2 Project Members

Die Nationalromantik im 19. und bis ins frühe 20. Jahrhundert führte zur «Wiederentdeckung» von Volkserzählungen, die in dieser Zeit gesammelt, ediert und veröffentlicht wurden. Diese Publikationen wurden von einer Reihe von Faktoren, darunter politische, kulturelle und wissenschaftliche Rahmenbedingungen beeinflusst. Auch die persönlichen Vorlieben und Überzeugungen der Sammler und Übersetzer spielten eine wichtige Rolle, welche Erzählungen ausgewählt und wie sie ediert und übersetzt wurden. Die Dissertation untersucht die Geschichte der Sammlung und Übersetzung isländischer Volksmärchen im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert, wobei der Fokus auf den Werken von Jón Árnason, Magnús Grímsson und Konrad Maurer liegt. Das Hauptziel der Dissertation besteht darin zu verstehen, wie diese Volkserzählungen verstanden, kategorisiert, eingerahmt und möglicherweise angeeignet wurden. Dabei wird untersucht, ob es einen Unterschied zwischen internen und externen Perspektiven auf Island gibt, wobei die Komplexitäten berücksichtigt werden, die sich aus der Zusammenarbeit von Isländern und Nicht-Isländern im Veröffentlichungsprozess ergeben. Es werden verschiedene Quellen wie Handschriften, Editionen, Übersetzungen, Briefe und Reiseberichte qualitativ analysiert, um zu zeigen, wie die Texte, Editionen und Übersetzungen geformt wurden, um spezifische Wirkungen zu erzielen. Dabei werden Volkserzählungen als ein Forschungsparadigma betrachtet, das sich in einem diskursiven Netzwerk von Wissenschaftlern über einen längeren Zeitraum entwickelt hat und auf früheren Setzungen beruht. Darüber hinaus wird auch der Einfluss der Volkserzählungen auf die Bildung von Forschungsparadigmen in der Skandinavistik analysiert.

Resonating networks. Discursive, spatial and personal hubs of research paradigms in Old Norse studies (1650-1950)

Research Project | 3 Project Members

The binational Weave-project (lead agency SNSF, partner agency DFG) "Nachhallende Netzwerke", based at the University of Basel and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, aims to examine the origins, discursive constitution, and implications of research paradigms in Old Norse studies. With a methodological foundation in discourse analysis and network-theoretical approaches in the tradition of Bruno Latour's actor-network theory (ANT), it will address how complex and interrelating networks of people, places, texts (both literary and mainly scholarly), and discourses have created Setzungen in the discipline that resonate profoundly in later generations of scholarship across national and linguistic boundaries and still influence recent research up to the present day. The project will study the establishment of central research paradigms and the cross-discursive relationships between these paradigms in Old Norse studies from the beginning of the discipline's research history in the mid-17th century to the mid-20th century. Four PhD theses and one Post Doc project will provide case studies of selected research paradigms, focusing on (P1) the protophilological beginning of textual criticism, (P2) the theorising and nationalistic discursivisation of the concept of myth before, during, and after the Romantic period, (P3) the national appropriation and reinterpretation of Icelandic oral tales in the construction of folktales, (P4) Konrad Maurer's conceptualisation of the Freistaat, and (P5) Heusler's notion of Germanic poetry. These five studies will be complemented by the research of the two Principal Investigators, who will analyse the concepts of (P6) authorship and (P7) genre as metaparadigms that resonate in the scholarly discourse of Old Norse studies in both synchronic and diachronic terms. The project will not only make an important contribution to the history of discourse and networks in the international scientific community of Old Norse and Scandinavian medieval studies from the late premodern period to the mid-20th century. It will also provide insights into the synchronic and diachronic resonance of central research paradigms in the field of Old Norse studies, as well as demonstrate how these paradigms, in the sense of Setzungen, co-determine not only the discourses, but the objects of study themselves. The project will closely cooperate with the archival institutions in Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland who hold the estates (Nachlässe) of the scholars studied in this project. As part of this cooperation, the project will provide the archives and related catalogues (Kalliope, handrit.is et al.) with new metadata generated in the course of the project work. The close cooperation with the archives will make it possible to directly convert scholarly findings into library reference systems and thus make them available to the general public. Four external project partners with renowned international expertise in different aspects pertaining to the project will accompany the project work as advisors and contribute to the planned project workshops, conferences and publications.
Website: https://www.resonatingnetworks.com/