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Stephen Robertson

@srober30.bsky.social
1.1K followers 828 following 29 posts

Professor of History at George Mason University; co-creator of Digital Harlem; author of Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935, harlemindisorder.org; drstephenrobertson.com

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Reposted by Stephen Robertson
Jason Heppler @jasonheppler.org · 27/07/2026
New little side project: Westward, an endless scroll of 1,000+ public-domain photographs of the American West from the Library of Congress, the Portal to Texas History, and SMU’s DeGolyer Library.
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Thrilled that Harlem in Disorder is a finalist for the 2026 @acls1919.bsky.social Open Access Book Prizes and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Awards for multimodal publications -- alongside another @stanfordpress.bsky.social Digital Project, @mattdelmont.bsky.social's Black Quotidian.
Five images of book covers for multi-modal projects
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
New in Current Research in Digital History: Kimberley Connor's "Unexpected Origins: Mapping Assisted Female Immigrants to New South Wales" - crdh.rrchnm.org/essays/v09-0... @rrchnm.bsky.social
crdh.rrchnm.org
Unexpected Origins: Mapping Assisted Female Immigrants to New South Wales – Current Research in Digital History
Hosted by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, Current Research in Digital History is an open-access, peer-reviewed, online publication. Its primary aim is to encourage and publish sch...
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Cameron Blevins @cblevins.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
🗺️ Visualization: "How Fast Was the Mail?": cblevins.github.io/mail-time/ ✏️ Post: "Bottlenecks, Side Quests, and the Calculus of Historical Research": cblevins.github.io/posts/bottleneck-side-quests/ 💻 Code and Dataset: github.com/cblevins/mail-time/
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Lincoln Mullen @lincolnmullen.com · 25/03/2026
Applications are open for the 2026 Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Creativity in Digital History, the signal prize in the field. Due May 15. www.historians.org/award-grant/...
historians.org
Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Creativity in Digital History – AHA
This prize is awarded annually to honor and support work on a creative and freely available new media project, and in particular for work that reflects thoughtful, critical, and rigorous engagement with...
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Lincoln Mullen @lincolnmullen.com · 09/03/2026
A few months ago I realized my rare and valuable skill—writing code as a historian—was still valuable but no longer rare. Now I'm thinking about what it means when the technical barriers to digital history drop away.
lincolnmullen.com
Behind, ahead | Lincoln Mullen
A historian reflects on how agentic AI coding tools have changed the possibilities for digital history, making once-rare programming skills widely accessible, and argues that digital history should be...
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Ruth Ahnert @ruthahnert.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
@kmcdono.bsky.social @danielwilson.bsky.social and I have a new OA article out: eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A... It’s about the fragmented landscape of historical data, and what we can do about it to improve discoverability, sustainability and reuse.
eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
Show Me the Data: New Practices for Historical Sources | Transactions of the Royal Historical Society | Cambridge Core
Show Me the Data: New Practices for Historical Sources
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Grateful for two recent prizes for Harlem in Disorder: - 2025 Ángel David Nieves Book Award for Best Monograph, American Studies Association Digital Humanities Caucus - Honorable Mention, 2025 Mary L. Dudziak Digital Legal History Prize, American Society for Legal History
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Back from presenting an early prototype of a new project mapping early 20th century undercover investigations at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Legal History - including this poster.
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Mikko Tolonen @tolonen.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
Great news! This is out: Opening the black box of EEBO academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-...
academic.oup.com
Opening the black box of EEBO
Abstract. Digital archives that cover extended historical periods can create a misleading impression of comprehensiveness while in truth providing access t
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RRCHNM @rrchnm.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
CRDH Vol. 8: New research from Fabio Gigone, Natacha Klein Käfer, Natália da Silva Perez, Nadav Borenstein, Miara Fraikin, Sanne Maekelberg, and Anna McGee explores topics from royal iconography to AI-powered print analysis, midwifery education to palace networks. Read here: crdh.rrchnm.org
crdh.rrchnm.org
Current Research in Digital History
Hosted by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, Current Research in Digital History is an open-access, peer-reviewed, online publication. Its primary aim is to encourage and publish scholarship in digital history that offers discipline-specific arguments and interpretations.
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Kendra Boyd @kendradboyd.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
Launching an interactive digital map and database of Detroit’s historic Black-owned businesses. Check it out at freedomenterprise.org
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RRCHNM @rrchnm.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
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Dr Jessica Parr @provatlantic.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
Been hearing about the horrific climate Harvard U Press for some time: www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
thecrimson.com
Harvard University Press Employees Say Director Drove Down Acquisitions and Morale | News | The Harvard Crimson
Since George T. Andreou ’87 became the press’s director in 2017, staff alleged — in interviews, union surveys, and letters to Harvard officials — that he belittled employees and mismanaged the publish...
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Dan Cohen @dancohen.org · 14/04/2025
“When Information is Networked” — My tribute to Clifford Lynch, who sadly passed away last week. Cliff saw before anyone else how digital technology would enable new forms of research and learning, and completely transform the production and dissemination of knowledge
A watercolor of a thin waterfall in the mountains, and an associated rainbow emerging from the mist
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RRCHNM @rrchnm.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
Last week we learned that 6 of our active NEH awards—totaling $789k in unspent funds—were immediately terminated by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.This is obviously a blow, and a serious one, to our work.But we will carry on. To see our terminated grants rrchnm.org/news/carryin...
rrchnm.org
Carrying On When the Grants Go Away – Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
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Kathleen Fitzpatrick @kfitz.info · 15/03/2025
Y'all. I get that a small scholarly org can be nimble and take on a lot of quick, grassroots work. It's super important and exciting. But that should not encourage you to insult the hardworking professionals who are keeping large scholarly orgs moving in astonishingly difficult circumstances.
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Jeffrey McClurken @jmcclurken.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
@historians.org & the AHA Digital History Working Group are applying for an NEH digital humanities grant. Historians, please take this quick 2-question survey about your interest in digital tools & methods for research/teaching. Help shape future DH workshops & share with interested colleagues.
docs.google.com
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
In the era of AI, perhaps we need to return to the term the AHA used instead of digital historian in 1999: the proposal for the e-Gutenberg project aimed for publications "without elaborate links to documents and databases, or “bells and whistles,” according to the jargon of the e-people."
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WorldsLargest @algeebraten.bsky.social · 24/10/2024
Why do people transcribe @librarycongress collections? What do volunteers get out of crowdsourced transcription? Our article "Giving back, learning, relaxing, & having fun: personal motivations & impacts of a virtual volunteer transcription program" is out now! rdcu.be/dXXRs @tjowens.bsky.social
rdcu.be
Giving back, learning, relaxing, and having fun: personal motivations and impacts of a virtual volunteer transcription program
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Reposting this for all the new arrivals
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Cameron Blevins @cblevins.bsky.social · 29/10/2024
New post, “A Large Language Model Walks Into an Archive…” explores how historians can use off-the-shelf LLMs to work with primary sources 📜 cblevins.github.io/posts/llm-pr...
Page one of a handwritten letter by Benjamin Curtis (1886)Transcription of a handwritten letter by Benjamin Curtis (1886) completed by ChatGPT
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 29/10/2024
Just back from presenting my digital monograph, Harlem in Disorder, at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Legal History - including this poster, which I hope helps convey the multilayered format of the publication as well as its arguments about the legal aftermath of the disorder.
A conference poster about the digital monograph Harlem in Disorder including a diagram of the 3 layers of the monograph and the links between them.
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 26/10/2024
My friend Leah Meisterlin shared with me a new, collaborative 3D mapping project: Exploring Seneca Village depicts the African-American village destroyed by NYC to make way for Central Park envisioningsenecavillage.github.io See also her team's 🏆🤩 Mapping Historical NY atlas: mappinghny.com
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Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 18/10/2024
Soft launch on a Friday afternoon, but I’m too excited to wait—we finally have a new database providing search & download access to the Viral Texts Project’s "speculative bibliographies" of C19 newspaper reprinting Huge thanks to iSchool PhD student Daniel Evans for making the impossible possible!
viraltexts.org
A New Viral Texts Database
Back in 2020, Viral Texts Project co-PI Ryan Cordell—henceforth “I,” as I’m also the one writing here—wrote about our collective failure to develop and maintain a database of the reprints we have unco...
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 15/10/2024
New to me as a way of promoting my digital monograph Harlem in Disorder - a reddit AMA (ask me anything) at r/AskHistorians (www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...) on October 17 - thanks to @dhowlett1692.bsky.social for the invitation - @stanfordpress.bsky.social 🗃️
reddit.com
Reddit - Dive into anything
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Brett Bobley @brettbobley.bsky.social · 04/10/2024
I attended a meeting in May about the NYPL's Backlist Revival Project. They are working to make a lot of these titles available. See: networks.h-net.org/group/discus...
networks.h-net.org
Introducing The New York Public Library’s Scholarly Press Backlist Revival Project | H-Net
A guest post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications. Guest post by Greg Cram, associate general counsel and director, Information Policy; and Kathleen Riegelhaupt, director eR...
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Tim Hitchcock @timhitchcock.bsky.social · 02/10/2024
Really pleased to announce the launch of a thoroughly updated version of Locating London's Past: locatinglondon.org - new functionality, better mapping, cleaner data. @ihr.bsky.social @long18thsem.bsky.social @ihrhistorylab.bsky.social
The home page of the Locating London's Past website, including a map illustrating thefts 1674-1819, and a panel on the right with information about the site and links.
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Trevor Owens @tjowens.bsky.social · 20/09/2024
A hugely important issue for the future of historical research.
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 22/08/2024
Looking forward to talking with Scott Berg about how you can use the digital medium not just to remediate a book but to extend it so the form fits your argument and offers the narrative of your research that footnotes no longer can: chr.gmu.edu/events/16028 (you can join us on Zoom)
chr.gmu.edu
CHR Book Launch: Stephen Robertson's "Harlem in Disorder"
Monday, September 23, 2024 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT
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Alan Liu @alanyliu.bsky.social · 16/09/2024
Happy to announce the MLA’s new “Guidelines for Evaluating Digital Scholarship”: www.mla.org/About-Us/Gov.... It represents 2 years of work by our MLA Committee on Information Technology to revise the previous, narrower “Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media.”
mla.org
Guidelines for Evaluating Digital Scholarship
Published by the Committee on Information Technology in 2024, these MLA guidelines are designed to help departments and scholars implement effective and fair evaluation procedures for hiring, reappoin...
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Zachary Schrag @zacharyschrag.bsky.social · 14/09/2024
A lovely profile of Ken Cobb, Assistant Commissioner at NYC Department of Records. In 1997, Ken steered me to the papers of Mayor John Hylan, leading to my first published article. #archivistsrule 🗃️ 👑 magazine.columbia.edu/article/secr...
magazine.columbia.edu
The Secret Keeper of New York City
After forty-plus years with the New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Kenneth Cobb ’78GSAS knows where all the files are buried.
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 22/08/2024
Looking forward to talking with Scott Berg about how you can use the digital medium not just to remediate a book but to extend it so the form fits your argument and offers the narrative of your research that footnotes no longer can: chr.gmu.edu/events/16028 (you can join us on Zoom)
chr.gmu.edu
CHR Book Launch: Stephen Robertson's "Harlem in Disorder"
Monday, September 23, 2024 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 20/08/2024
I do like the new NEH logo, which trades in the starkly 'national' crest to return to an image more evocative of the 'humanities' - but its the seal with tagline that I need on a t-shirt right now. Hat-tip to whoever opted for "Democracy Demands Wisdom' from the choices in the founding legislation
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Judith Weisenfeld @jlweisenfeld.bsky.social · 20/08/2024
If you’re teaching about Father Divine and the Peace Mission, check out my new Storymap that includes a map of almost 1000 members in 1940 Harlem and scores of Peace Mission businesses.
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Martin Paul Eve @eve.gd · 16/07/2024
My book, Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History, is out today! OA copy for download but also available to purchase in print if you don't fancy reading 400+ pages on screen. Discount code for Stanford UP in the blog post. eve.gd/2024/07/16/t...
eve.gd
Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History is out today!
I am very pleased to say that my book, Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History, is out today!
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Lincoln Mullen @lincolnmullen.com · 07/05/2024
"Antisemitism, U.S.A" is the most recent podcast from @rrchnm.bsky.social, launching at the end of June. Join us May 23 for a livestream event from the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History featuring leading scholars of U.S. antisemitism. theweitzman.org/events/antis...
theweitzman.org
Antisemitism, USA | Conversation with Zev Eleff, Kristen Fermaglich, Sarah Ihoff, Lincoln Mullen, Mark Oppenheimer, Britt Tevis and John Turner
Antisemitism, USA, a forthcoming podcast, asks the questions: How can Americans overcome a problem that they can’t define, a bigotry whose particulars shift over time, a hatred that most consider a pr...
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Aviel Roshwald @avielroshwald.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
Happy to have participated in an H-Diplo roundtable on Matthew Connelly’s excellent new book: The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals about America’s Top Secrets 🗃️ networks.h-net.org/group/discus...
networks.h-net.org
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable Review 15-39 on Connelly, _The Declassification Engine_ | H-Net
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies ForumRoundtable Review 15-39 Matthew Connelly. The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals about America’s Top Secrets. New York: Pantheon ...
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Jason Rhody @jasonrhody.bsky.social · 04/04/2024
The NSF Grad Research Fellowship funds at least 2,500 STEM *grad students* at approx $159k (to be used over 3 years). The NEH Fellowships for *faculty* funds an avg of 71 awards up to $60k for one year. There is 0 funding available for hum grad students. The imbalance is astonishing and harmful.
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 02/04/2024
🗃️
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Urban History Association (the official account) @urbanhistorya.bsky.social · 02/04/2024
"Our granular investigation and mapping of these events highlighted the risk of that simplified and selective approach for understanding something as multifaceted as collective racial violence. Details change the picture." @srober30.bsky.social discusses his new work on Harlem 1935
themetropole.blog
The Metropole Bookshelf: Stephen Robertson Discusses “Harlem in Disorder”
The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. by Stephen Robertson I was not intendi...
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 21/03/2024
Today at 5 PM EST!
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 20/03/2024
Register now for the online L. Dennis Shapiro and Susan R. Shapiro Digital History Seminar tomorrow to discuss my digital monograph Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935 (harlemindisorder.org) and hear the comments of Jessica Marie Johnson
masshist.org
Fitting Form to Argument: Developing a Digital Publication for the Complexity of Harlem in Disorder
MHS Response to COVID-19
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 11/03/2024
Registrations now open: Fitting Form to Argument: Developing a Digital Publication for the Complexity of Harlem in Disorder, online 3/21 @ 5 PM: www.masshist.org/events/fitti.... Join a discussion about using the digital medium to extend the form of the book to fit digital research & arguments.
masshist.org
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 05/03/2024
Now published by Stanford University Press open access & online only: Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935 - harlemindisorder.org. Learn more about the form of this multilayered, hyperlinked narrative on March 21: www.masshist.org/events/fitti...
harlemindisorder.org
Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935
The violence that spread across Harlem on the night of March 19, 1935 was the first large-scale racial disorder in the United States in more than a decade and the first occurrence in the nation's lead...
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 01/03/2024
Paper submitted - event in 3 weeks: www.masshist.org/events/fitti...
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Stephen Robertson @srober30.bsky.social · 16/02/2024
My digital monograph, Harlem in Disorder, now has a cover - & is on track to go live next month! Thanks @stanfordpress.bsky.social
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