This week, a group of 25 scholars from all over Europe took advantage of the opportunity to learn from experts in the field of digital humanities during a ReIReS Course, organized by the Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna.

One of the pillars of ReIRes is the training of young academics in the field religious studies. Part of the ReIReS training programme are the six courses on digital humanities and historical religious studies. The course in Bologna was the second in a row of six.

The course started with an overview on the development of digital humanities since the 80’s, given by Prof. Dino Buzetti. In the following workshop Paolo Monella (Palermo) and Fabio Cusimano (Milano) unraveled to us the secrets of TEI XML & IIIF and so much more.

Francesca Tomasini  (Bologna) learned the participants how to build an own webpage and now Maristella Agosti (Padua) showed us around in the area of search engines and search optimization. On the last day, Thomas Milo and Alicia González Martínez (Hamburg) showed a detailed insight into the application of digital humanities in Arabic texts.

During the course it became clear, that it is very useful for scholars working and others, like librarians, to have at least an idea of the meaning of digital humanities for historical religious studies and how to use them. But the outcome was far more than that. As one of the attendants said: “The trainers were really good. They introduced us in the basics, but we were also able to train our skills, so that in the end we were able to work already rather autonomously.”

During the course there was also a meeting with with representatives of Bolognese religious communities, since ReIReS wants to discuss how it can serve local communities adequately. Some practical ideas were exchanged, which hopefully can be followed up in the course of the ReIReS project.

Image: Fabio Nardelli