Dr. Cindarella Petz

Digital History, Historical Network Research, Text Analysis, Digital Humanities, Computational History

I am a digital historian working at the intersection of the humanities and computer science. My research focuses on advancing data-driven research within (digital) history combining computational and quantitative methods – such as network analaysis, applied text analysis, and machine learning approaches – with qualitative and domain-specific contextualization and evaluation. I am especially interested in the epistemological implications of the digital for humanities research practices, and consider digital literacy and computational competencies such as coding and algorithmic literacy as key skills of today’s scholarship in the humanities.

In my Habilitation project situated at the interdisciplinary crosspoint of computational history, legal history, and computer linguistics at Leibniz Institute of European History, I am examining the semantic construction of political criminality at court in order to trace the transformation of the former Austrian democracy to an autocracy during the Dollfu{}-/Schuschnigg-Regime (1933—1938).

I am editor at Journal of Historical Network Research (JHNR)‚ and one of the chairs of the “HNR Community”. In March, I finished my tenure as senior convenor of the working group “Graphs and Networks” of the DHd. As part of the Local Organizing Committe, I organized the GrapHNR Conference in Mainz, the session on “Networks and the Human Past” at INSNA SUNBELT 2024 in Edinburgh, and taught in the Barcelona Past Networks Summer Schools 2024 and 2025, which is set to be repeated in 2026.