Workshop: Digital Methods in Diplomatic Research
The workshop Digital Methods in Diplomatic Research was held at the University of Graz, Institute of Digital Humanities (Elisabethstraße 59) on 13 February 2026 in frames of the project “Medieval Serbian Charters Action (MeSeCA) – Towards a Digital Edition of the Royal Charters of Medieval Serbia” (Medieval Serbian Charters Action – Geisteswissenschaftliche Fakultät Uni Graz), led by Zarko Vujosevic and supervised by Georg Vogeler. Invited contributors were diplomatists who were taught in traditional methods regarding research of medieval sources, mainly charters, and eventually began applying digital methods in their work. They were asked to share their own experiences – based on concrete projects or case studies – on how digital / computational methods improved their research, which concrete results they achieved, or what their ideas or expectations are in that matter.
The eight given presentations were grouped in four sections, addressing different aspects of Diplomatics and emphasising the dynamic relation between “old” or traditional concepts and “new” digital approach. The extensive contributions, 30 minutes each, were followed by a 15-minute discussion. The workshop languages were English and German.
Within the session Digital Diplomatics: Modern Classic, the workshop was introduced with a keynote speech by GEORG VOGELER (University of Graz) – The red carpet: How digital and distant diplomatics could look like? – giving an impression of Diplomatics as a classic discipline with new ways of doing and conceptualizing the research. It was followed by a presentation of the project MeSeCA and its development from “analogue” to a digital charters edition of Serbian royal charters (12th–15th centuries) by ZARKO VUJOSEVIC (University of Graz / University of Belgrade) and his co-workers PAVLE NIKOLIC (University of Belgrade) and THEA SCHAAF (University of Graz) – The MeSeCA Project: Traditional concept, digital approach.
The session Evergreen Topics: Edition, Typology dealt with the named “eternal” issues of Diplomatics in the digital environment. DANIEL LUGER (University of Vienna), Registers as data: Digital methods in the edition of Pope Honorius III’s chancery registers, presented the Viennese edition project, started in 2024, including some prospects in digital processing and representation of the material, composed of ca. 5000 charters copied into the register of Honorius III (1216–1227). The contribution of SVEN JAROS (University of Halle-Wittenberg), What do we lose between the Bytes? Bringing Charters into a Graph database and the ambivalent Disambiguation along the Way, based on his case study of late medieval Eastern European charters, discussed the possibilities of modelling diplomatic material in FactGrid, focusing on challenges of defining / explaining diplomatic terms, including typology of documents, with this method.

Tracing Formulas: Diktatvergleich – A New Episode was the session dedicated to the new (digital) paths in analysing diplomatic formulas, as potential improvement of the well-known comparative method named Diktatvergleich. SÉBASTIEN BARRET (IRHT Paris), FLAME und die Privaturkunden aus Cluny (9.–11. Jh.). Erfahrungen, Fragen und Perspektiven, presented his own experiences in using “Formulaic Language Analysis in Medieval Expressions” (FLAME), a tool developed in frames of the Graz project “From Digital to Distant Diplomatics (DiDip)”, for identifying and comparing formulas in the corpus of private documents from the Burgundian monastery. Showing the potential of this method in terms of big data query and opening new research questions, he also pointed out challenges regarding unstandardised charters’ language, which may be answered by normalisation and/or lemmatisation. Another project dealing with medieval documents from France, namely episcopal charters of the diocese of Reims (11th–12th centuries), identifies and localises formulas with graph-based modelling strategy. SEBASTIAN GENSICKE (RWTH Aachen University), Identification and Localisation of Formulaic Language using Document-Term-Network-Visualizations, shared his results in detection of chancery practices, which have been achieved by successful application of a digital method completely apart from the “book paradigm”.
As a basic discipline (Grundwissenschaft) dealing with sources, Diplomatics prepares the ground for interpretation, which also means putting charter texts into the historical context. This was the topic of the session Documentary Spaces: Charters Mirroring Historical Reality with two contributions given by colleagues from the host institution. GIUSEPPE CONSOLO (University of Graz), From Maps to Documents: Controlling Urbanity in Large Charter Corpora, presented digital methods like FLAME and geo-referencing in order to define if and on which level contents of charters (in this case coming from www.monasterium.net late medieval archival fonds) are related to urban authorities or institutions. JOHANNES LAROCHE (University of Graz), Structures of late medieval writing: A network analysis of Lambach’s charter production in the 15th century, showed how he was able to gain insights into the mechanisms of document-making with a help of graph-models and processing of prosopographical data in the corpus of almost 2000 charters from the Upper Austrian Benedictine monastery.
All presentations were followed by comprehensive and fruitful discussions, well moderated by Tamás Kovács and Florian Atzenhofer-Baumgartner from the University of Graz. At the end, the speakers and attendees (25 in present and ca. 20 online) were invited for a closing discussion, moderated by Franziska Decker (University of Graz) and Zarko Vujosevic. This round-up session, structured with concrete questions directed to each speaker, was indeed highly interactive. Through exchange on topics like methodology of charters edition, typology of documents, comparing diplomatic formulas, visualisation of research results or reconstructing “documentary spaces” in historical context, the discussion led back to the main issue of the workshop – how digital methods can improve diplomatic research. Without attempting at final conclusions or general guidance, the participants agreed that digital skills do not only mean programming tools to enhance working efficiency, but also open new insights into diplomatic material and help putting new research questions into discussion. Even if the basic concepts and tasks of Diplomatics remain largely unchanged, its perspectives in the digital environment may roll out the red carpet for diplomatists, historians, archivists and all other interested in history – and it’s up to them in which way to walk it!
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OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Žarko Vujošević (March 12, 2026). Workshop: Digital Methods in Diplomatic Research. DiDip. Retrieved April 12, 2026 from https://didip.hypotheses.org/4930

