Humlab Share: Biographical dictionaries: inroads in terra incognita

Marco H.D. van Leeuwen (International Institute for Social History/ Utrecht University)

Register data have been massively used in history, the social and biomedical sciences. They cover nearly everyone in many places over the globe in a structured way. But they contain relatively little info. (Auto)biographies are very much richer in info - but selective and less structured. The genre of biographical dictionaries forms a middle road: much information, somewhat standardized, and with an in-between coverage. They are as yet underexplored.

I will present some examples of recent studies, zoom in on the example for status attainment of notable Swedish women, and zoom out again on the genre of biographical dictionaries as they exist in many countries. The genre is virtually untapped and a treasure trove for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. To open this treasure trove, we need digital humanities and computational social science methods and collaborators.