Digital Public History:

two guesses on other possible stories in the Digital Age

Abstract

The present text discusses an experience of experimental research in the field of history, in a more specific cohort called digital public history. As experiments are not very common in the field of human and social sciences, the author argues in favor of the critical adoption of self-reflexive gestures that accompany the systematic documentation of decision-making processes, conceptual choices and tools, among other possible deviations that a path much fraught with trial and error steps can entail. The exercise of documenting the process is central to what she calls the hermeneutics of practice and can be an important key for new experiments like the one described in the text – with digital methods and tools in history – to be read, understood and, if desired, repeated by other historians, inside and outside the bubble of digital (public) history.