The digital humanities are becoming a growing and unavoidable reality for those working with historical knowledge. They have gained intellectual and institutional footing among scholars across disciplines, who have proceeded from arguing for their potential to discussing their practice and implications. Such discussions include the question of defining an epistemological identity for the field, along with the theoretical and practical implications for scholarship and within the institutional structures that evaluate a scholar’s work.
On the other hand, the most recent developments in knowledge production regimes allow it to be developed in an increasingly collaborative and more easily shared manner. That this is so can certainly be understood by some characteristics of the technologies involved, related to the establishment of horizontal networks and the facilitation of traffic and electronic exchange of information. The role of the global computer network, in this aspect, mainly from the affirmation of the so-called web 2.0, characterized not only by the wide availability of studies and investigations, but also by the widely favored opportunity for their collaborative production, increasingly allows the realization of practice of those theoretical values. Thus, the ethics of defending the free circulation of knowledge has strongly conditioned the development of digital humanities, as they are easily articulated with what remains of it in the academic and scientific environment.
Framed by public history, open science and digital humanities, this project aims to design and build a computational platform for collaborative spatial historical research. The principal goal is to develop state-of-the-art software tools, such as a web portal and Geographical Information System (GIS) plugins, that allow humanities researchers to create, organize, store, integrate, process and publish urban history data sets. The proposed platform integrates all these tools.
The project foresees the development and release in the worldwide web of a digital historical cartographic database of São Paulo city covering the period of its urban and industrial modernization (1870-1940). The space-time focus of this project has historical and methodological justifications. On the one hand, the conviction that the city during this period experienced a dramatic process of urbanization, almost unique in terms of history, is well established in historiography. On the other hand, and precisely because it is a scenario and a period of great historiographical appeal and with a great density of academic production, the objective of raising awareness of potential collaborators is significantly facilitated.
The platform will provide access to this database and allow interaction among researchers, who will be able to contribute to the database events that can be spatially and temporally represented. In doing so, scholars will be able to produce maps and visualizations of their own research and at the same time contribute to the data within the system. This project will enrich understanding of the history of São Paulo during the above-mentioned period in addition to offering an innovative model of research for the digital humanities that recognizes the immense opportunities of open science.
The first phase of the project, focusing on a pilot area corresponding to São Paulo's city center, was carried out from February 2017 to January 2021. The beta version of the platform is available on the internet for testing (www.pauliceia.unifesp.br). The actual second phase will expand the spatial coverage, the platform functionalities, and community engagement. It will also create a guide to allow other researchers to replicate the approaches in other cities.
The communication aims to present the state of the art of the platform and its main functionalities, the path taken to achieve this and the methodological reflections it provided, and a perspective for the continuity of the project. As the version of the platform currently available is undergoing a testing phase by researchers who volunteer to do so, special attention should be paid to the possibilities for engagement and acceptance of criticism and suggestions. In this way, in addition to seeking to disseminate a project in which free collaboration is decisive for its success, the aim is to provide support for reflections on the relationships between technology, historical knowledge and the open science movement.
The project has a multidisciplinary team of around 30 people, and is a partnership between the Federal University of São Paulo (Guarulhos and São José dos Campos campuses), the Aeronautics Technological Institute, the National Institute for Space Research, Emory University and the Public Archive from the State of São Paulo, and is funded by CNPq and the Fapesp eScience Program.
The project should enrich the approaches concerning the spatial history of São Paulo during the above-mentioned period within the most recent and interesting digital humanities unfolding, which fosters collaborative work and free knowledge flow.