Wednesday, 4 March 2026
Inaugural lecture by Huygens Director Dirk van Miert
Centuries-old principles of editorial scholarship are relevant in today’s digital research
On the occasion of his appointment as professor of Knowledge History from a Digital Perspective at Utrecht University, Huygens Director Dirk van Miert will deliver a public inaugural lecture. The theme of the lecture is: ‘Source text and context: on data, editorial scholarship 2.0 and digital infrastructure’. Read more about the lecture and how to register below.
Image: a scholar in his study, attributed to Willem de Poorter, ca. 1642-1650. Rijksmuseum collection. Interior of a study where a scholar has fallen asleep in his chair behind a table, his head resting on his left hand. Large piles of books and papers lie on the table. Against the back wall is a bookcase.
In his inaugural lecture, Dirk van Miert discusses, among other things, the role of digital technologies and artificial intelligence in making historical sources accessible, one of the core activities of the Huygens Institute. He shows how centuries-old principles of editorial science, such as contextualisation, bias and reconstruction of lost material, are also relevant in digitised scientific practice. At the same time, he discusses the opportunities and challenges of digital infrastructures and data processing.
Dirk van Miert on digital technologies and editorial science:
About the black box of artificial intelligence
‘There is growing concern in society about disinformation. Large language models and algorithms increasingly determine how we encounter information and knowledge, but how these models and algorithms work often remains invisible, a black box. For example, AI can select and disseminate digital texts and images without us knowing that this is happening, even if the information is incorrect.
At the same time, digital technologies offer great opportunities: within the digital humanities, large amounts of “paper” historical data are being made digitally accessible to science and society. A prerequisite is that this is done in a scientifically responsible manner.’
About reliable choices in digital research
‘For centuries, the field of textual criticism has been concerned with precisely this issue. What is a reliable representation of a historical source? How do you place a source in the right context? How do you reconstruct what has been lost and how do you take into account what has never been written down? This painstaking scientific work forms the basis of the Huygens Institute.’
(c) RGvT, NRC.
‘Old techniques such as footnotes and thematic indexes are the precursors of modern data models with tags and linked data. Digitising archives involves the same issues: layering, fragmentary sources, contextualisation, representativeness and conscious handling of bias.’
On the importance of digital sustainability
‘Just as paper archives require special rooms and cabinets to bridge the centuries, digitisation also requires proper preservation, such as a robust and maintainable digital infrastructure, and specialists who can edit, clean up, standardise, tag and link data.
In short, data science is in fact edition science. What has been done for centuries with pen and paper is now done digitally. The core remains the same: making reliable, well-embedded and scientifically sound data available so that both science and society can benefit from it.
AI and new digital techniques make this possible, but without the principles of editorial science, we lack the context and reliability that make historical research essential.’
Read this interview with Dirk van Miert.
Register for the inaugural lecture
You can register for the lecture hall with Bart van der Ven: bart.van.der.ven@bb.huc.knaw.nl.
The livestream can be viewed via this link.