Social and institutional networks exist both in the past and in the present. Currently, we are familiar with the concept of a ‘social network’ from the pervasiveness of websites such as Facebook. This network awareness has manifested itself in the research interests of younger generations of historians who are familiar and fluent in these technologies. For example, a majority of the participants at our GRAINES Summer School have discussed the role of networks of people, institutions, objects, and ideas in their research projects. The main question raised is how to visualize these networks, how to study these networks, and how to analyze these networks to gain new insights about our topics. Further, questions of the value of network analysis have been raised, and there is not a current consensus if the amount of effort and labour necessary to produce network visualizations and analysis is worth the current professional return allocated by academic evaluation metrics inside of history schools/departments and by funding agencies (e.g. evaluation of research, employment, career progression, etc.).
The diversity of Summer School sessions has identified future research questions and opportunities for the use of network reconstruction, analysis, and visualization in our own projects. Specifically, an interactive seminar about incorporating relational databases into our research and two unconference presentations about archival digitalization at the Austrian National Library and another about the use of prosepographies for analyzing social relations and network properties.
These questions have been beneficial for helping to identify that there is currently a need for the standardization of network scholarship, techniques, and methodologies in History. For my own PhD project, this means that it is necessary to concisely outline any network techniques and data used for my thesis. Perhaps more importantly, it is necessary to articulate why incorporating networks within a historical study is beneficial to the overall argument and research findings of an individual project. It is also equally necessary to acknowledge limitations of these newer techniques. While network visualizations are aesthetically pleasing and are able to convey complex connections between data points, it is possible to sometimes have ‘data overload’ and not be able to process either the meaning or benefit of incorporating network analysis in our studies.
Perhaps as a first step for achieving a unified framework for the historical study and mapping of networks in historical scholarship, it is necessary for technology-literate historians (many of whom are from our generation) to articulate in collected volumes or chapters in a larger work how we incorporate networks in our own research, and provide examples of analysis results (and benefits) alongside visualizations. From here, it would be possible to propose a unified framework by creating a common network vocabulary and toolbox of available network analysis techniques.
An additional problem is that network analysis scholarship exists in many disciplines outside of history. This includes sociology, economics, physics, and computer science. Without exploring these other fields, a unified network framework will not be achievable. Historians could gain to benefit from studying and mastering these alternative disciplinary techniques, and fusing them with our own methodologies to create new types of research output. It is also worth noting that historians have much to contribute to this multidisciplinary network scholarship. Our understanding of complex social networks, institutional connectivity, and the flow of objects/ideas/capital are well suited for placement within a ‘network paradigm’ of research. Historians can add qualitative narrative to traditionally quantitative metrics used by sociologists and economists who study the same subject. This interdisciplinary collaboration would require flexibility within academia for younger scholars to explore and contribute to scholarship beyond their own discipline.
To conclude, it is beneficial for communities of historians to come together and discuss the pros and cons of using networks in historical scholarship. Without discussing our methodologies, it is impossible to advance and further develop the network tools we hope to have available for use in future research. It is worth noting that data analysis and computing are useful techniques that will need to be further incorporated into the historical toolkit to advance network scholarship in history (and perhaps create interactive web applications to complement our current manuscript-style projects).
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