Are you a historian or a student of history at university with a keen interest in trade, material culture, commodity histories or just good old historical research? If yes, we at the GLOBALISE Project (KNAW Humanities Cluster), in collaboration with the CREATE Lab (UvA), invite you to participate in a workshop to contribute to and enrich our thesaurus of commodities traded in the early modern Indian Ocean world.

Join us in a half-day datasprint where we will research the definition of commodities, scour the VOC archives and other sources to find alternative labels for these goods, and even categorise commodities in groups that would be interesting and valuable for your own research.

This will be the perfect opportunity to sink your teeth into the archives of the Dutch East India Company, learn more about commodities that crossed the early modern seas, deploy your skills of historical research, interact with like-minded students and scholars, and contribute to the creation of a vital, shared resource.

We will provide snacks, you just bring your own laptop!

Programme

13:00 - 13:15 Introduction

13:15 - 14:15 Sprint part 1

14:15 - 14:30 Break

14:30 - 14:45 Commodity Stories

14:45 - 15:45 Sprint part 2

15:45 - 16:15 Closing discussion

GLOBALISE Datasprint: What on Earth is This?