As most of us remember all too well, the spring of 2020 was a difficult time, as we dealt simultaneously with the impact of a new and deadly disease upon ourselves and loved ones, as well as the sudden shock of having to live most of our lives in virtual environments.
Historians, like most other people, cancelled their planned gatherings in 2020, or shifted them online as best they could as we all hurriedly got to grips with Zoom and other online meeting platforms, and loudly wished for the return of business as usual. Yet for those of us involved in helping run AskHistorians, the moment seemed opportune to make the case for the advantages of digital platforms. The whole project, after all, is predicated on the notion that high-quality history has an audience beyond academia. As such, we set out to organise a conference that broke the mould, not just in terms of format, but also in terms of who gets to attend and participate.
With the generous support of you all, we’ve since hosted two digital conferences, and you can still watch the talks and read the AMAs from the amazing scholars who joined us. But we also wanted to share our intentions and lessons with other historians, and help shape what history conferences will look like in a post-pandemic world. As such, in late 2020, three of us (myself, u/Historiagrephour and u/Soviet_Ghosts) pitched an article to a special issue of History on digital public history. Over the course of 2021, we received peer reviews, made revisions, and waited. And, at last, our article ‘Out of the Ivory Tower, into the Digital World? Democratising Scholarly Exchange’ has now been published and is available here:
Due to an agreement with my own employer, the University of Sheffield, the article is completely open access, and can be viewed for free in perpetuity. We are very grateful for this, as breaking down barriers to knowledge was such an important part of our motivation to begin with, and we’re very excited that everyone here will be able to read it.
We’re all immensely proud to have been part of the AskHistorians Digital Conferences, and to be able to represent this community in a journal such as History. We hope you enjoy the read!
I agree with /u/Gankom. This is an important achievement. Well done! Although I saw at least one thing that I personnally take exception to (renowned??? - you've got to be kidding), the article is really brilliant and is an excellent marker in the sand. The international community of historians should take notice, and now, perhaps, it must.
/r/AskHistorians may not always have great days, but this is certainly one of them. Three Huzzahs and a Tiger for Fraser Raeburn, Lisa Baer-Tsarfati, and Viktoria Porter (you each get your own personal huzzah, but you'll have to share the roar of the tiger at the end).
This is incredible, well done to all the writers! Very interesting to see just how far our community can go!
I'm teaching a senior capstone class on Digital History in the Fall. I'll definitely include this. Well done!
Congrats!
Huge congratulations to everyone involved!
Huge congratulations!
This is delightful! I'm very pleased you mention the efforts taken to make it accessible, thank you.
Excellent work. Nice to have it freely accessible too :)
Thanks for making it freely available (I found it a most intresting read) and congratulations to all three of you for getting this peer reviewed and published.
How's wider academia reacting to the paper? "Yeah, let them play around.", "WTF are those idiots doing?", "Sounds nice" or "Wow, that's the hot new shit!"?