iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I've developed this as I work on AHRC project on the anti-Nazi resistance organisation the ISK. It has been SO useful to surface links between activists and to organise my own thoughts on a network (visualised here through my database) that was vast + global.

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The data you fill in to each note auto-updates a series of databases to give you a wider view of your research. This includes a system for mapping key locations, archives birth places, etc.

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The idea: you make a note for each person, location, organisation you research. You can create simple links between notes, but you can also build family trees within the people notes. It's designed to work with Zotero too, so a project-wide bibliography auto updates.

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 13/05/2026

A while back I created my own note-taking application by using code + Obsidian. It's a way of organising research grounded in social networks/collective biography. I've since refined it and I'm working on an open source version I'll share more widely. Here is a quick preview:

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My first time today doing the whole “mic-arm podcast studio” aesthetic — with the brilliant Shane Todd.

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 10/05/2026

Kate Nash gave Hotel Lux a REALLY great shout in today’s Observer! Thanks to @mcculld.bsky.social for spotting

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 01/05/2026

Happy May Day from "La Guinguette", successor to the Alpenpost, published (well, hand drawn) on this day in 1938 in a town outside Paris.

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 24/04/2026

The 1926 census confirms what I suggested in the article: Sidney and Rose Arnold had clearly returned from Soviet Russia by the mid-1920s. Here they are living in Malahide:

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I also love finding these clear examples of cross-cultural romances, like Mr and Mrs Zielinski of Rathmines, a young Polish-Irish couple. Frank was born in Poland, his wife Catherine was born in Waterford.

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But the technique can present many false friends: Searching 'Ullah' will surface Abdul Abdullah, a 30 year old ship engine worker from Luxor, Egypt - along with pages and pages of Mayo-born Mullahys.

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This will lead you to Matsuyo Hanakawa, a 22 year old woman from Nagasaki Japan who was living in Malahide. Perhaps the only Buddhist in the Census - but maybe others have found more?

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The Search function does not let you search by Birthplace but you can loosely target searches to find immigrants in the Census. You do not need to search by whole surnames. For example, using common suffixes you can make interesting discoveries. E.g. -kawa, one of the most common Japanese suffixes

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 15/04/2026

I have GONE WILD on the 1926 Irish census and have made some fun discoveries: Trinidadian medical students, a Baháʼí couple in Donegal, the Irish widow of an emigré Cossack, and Egyptian sailors in Cork city - among many others.

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Going through digitised NARA files and learned the OSS (forerunner to the CIA) believed there was a “Nazi spy center” operating in Tralee in 1942. Anyone know of any corroborating sources/reading on this?

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It's the kind of defacement that could be performed quickly: picture a resister, constantly watching over their shoulder, achieving this in a couple of motions. Yet its message was unmistakable. So simple a child could do it. In at least one case I've found, children did.

A children's birthday message with the same anti-Nazi greeting

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The ISK was instructing sympathisers how to simply and quickly transform Nazi iconography into a condemnation of the regime. Using four lines - one up, one across, one diagonal, one down - the Swastikas placed everywhere could be transformed into a warning: Nazis, your day is coming.

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The flyer declares (roughly translated): with heart and hand we will put the Nazi shame on every wall. "Und zwar so" - Just like this:

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 15/03/2026

Graphic Design for Antifascists: In 1936, the Gestapo encountered this flyer smuggled into Germany by the ISK, an anti-Nazi network. The Gestapo noted that the image was a calling card of this underground group. Behind it lay some clever design thinking 🧵 1/

Anti nazi slogan and a Swastika hanging from a gallows in a simple line drawing

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Thanks so much to Patricia Nicol for this wonderful review of our Alpenpost documentary today in @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-r...

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 14/03/2026

Nice little shout out in a rundown of cultural highlights in today’s @theguardian.com !

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 12/03/2026

Very cool to see our documentary received shout outs in the Saturday and Sunday Times! Thanks to everyone who has listened and got in touch - it has been lovely to hear from you.

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 09/03/2026

"A true story so remarkable it could easily become a film" Lovely write up from Anna Jones in the Radio Times!

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 07/03/2026

Thanks to Áine Toner of the @belfasttelegraph.co.uk for speaking with me about the Alpenpost!

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 04/03/2026

Coming up this SUNDAY! A true story of family, love and anti-Nazi resistance — researched and presented by yours truly. Live on BBC Radio 4 or listen later on BBC Sounds.

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 27/02/2026

Over the last few months I have been learning code/game design with QUB MediaLab - part of a longer term project to create interactive 3D recreations of the historical spaces I research. Yesterday I began (re)creating a 1930s anti-Nazi London hangout. Consider this very much the "Before" image:

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 23/02/2026

There's an extraordinarily kind review of Hotel Lux from Stephen Hopkins in the latest Labour History Review. Thank you to Stephen for understanding the book's mission: to encounter revolutionaries on their own terms + show how friendship and love was as powerful a motivation as ideology.

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 19/02/2026

Producer Mark Burman and I travelled to Amsterdam and Spain to reveal details about the most extraordinary source I found: the Alpenpost, a hand-crafted child's newspaper. It was written from exile by 2 girls, Elisa and Alida, and sent to their papa Edo: head of a continent wide resistance network.

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 19/02/2026

On Sun 8 March BBC Radio 4 will broadcast The Alpenpost: A Girl's Guide to Fighting Hitler and Stalin - a documentary based on my research! It traces how I uncovered the lost archive of an anti-Nazi resistance organiser in a wind-rattled villa on the Galician coast. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

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Maurice J. Casey @mauricejcasey.com · 09/02/2026

Belfast! I'm BACK on the seminar circuit with my latest project. All welcome to join me 20 Feb at 4pm for my talk 'First add oats, then kill Hitler: a recipe for resistance in underground Europe, 1920s-1940s' Plenty of new findings on the correlation between diet and the desire to resist Nazis.

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I'm not saying this method is for everybody. You really need to enjoy debugging, tinkering, etc. It helps I have a basic understanding of coding logic. And it suits my research. But if it's something you have long been considering, then all the software to achieve this is free + open source

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The game-changing factor for me is the ability to quickly create links between notes so that I can understand connections. Here, for example, is how I can jump from my notes on one resistance fighter, who was a vegetarian, to notes on the political history of vegetarianism.

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I work on profoundly interlinked and intimate social worlds and I needed to carry a graph like this inside my own mind to make sense of the stories I was trying to tell. With my new method, I have digital backup to my own understanding, allowing me to zoom in and out to understand connections.

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When I relied on my Giant Word Doc™ I basically had to combine notes with memory. If I wanted to write about something, I needed to pray a simple word search could dig up the relevant citation among 100k+ words. I also needed to hope I spelled the word correctly lol.

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