Research Universities

Transkribus Scholarship Showcase: December 2024

READ-COOP | December 11, 2024

As a non-profit co-operative, we are committed to supporting early-career researchers who might not have the financial resources to access tools like Transkribus for their work. To help these scholars achieve their goals, we created the Transkribus Scholarship—a programme offering free Transkribus credits to university students pursuing innovative research.

Since the scholarship’s launch in 2020, over a million Transkribus credits have been awarded to qualifying projects. In this Scholarship Showcase, we would like to introduce three recipients who are using Transkribus to break new ground in their research fields.

Reach for the stars: exploring early modern astronomy

As a PhD researcher in historical astronomy at the University of Vienna, Doris Vickers spends much of her day reading early modern astronomical texts. “My doctoral research examines astronomical practices and discoveries during the early 17th century, a period that saw the first telescopic observations transform our understanding of the cosmos,” she explained.

Previously, a project like this would have required months of manual transcription, preparing the texts for research work. But thanks to Transkribus, Doris has been able to bypass this step almost entirely, allowing her to spend more time on critical analysis.

“Rather than spending months deciphering historical handwriting, I can focus on understanding the scientific concepts, tracking the evolution of astronomical terminology, and identifying significant patterns in observational records from the early 1600s.”

Researching medieval manuscripts with modern methodology

Transkribus can be used for handwritten texts as far back as the 11th and 12th centuries, as Barbora Kulhová from Charles University in Prague is finding out. As part of her Bachelor’s thesis, Barbora is training a model for the transcription of a series of medieval Latin sermons, and documenting how the process works for an ordinary historian such as herself.

“Transkribus has been essential in providing the tools needed to train my text recognition model. I can work with the technology effectively, even without a deep knowledge of IT.”

While medieval manuscripts have previously been challenging for text recognition platforms, Barbora has managed to overcome the difficulties of these particular documents. “The platform is particularly effective in handling the unique challenges of medieval scripts, making the transcription process smoother.” By creating digital versions of these delicate documents, Barbora’s research is helping to not only preserve them, but also to prepare them for future analysis.

Revealing the history behind Sweden’s monumental synagogues

As a researcher at the intersection of religious and architectural history, Daniel Leviathan at Lund University is uncovering the stories behind Sweden’s 19th-century monumental synagogues. His project, Constructing Public Judaism: the Monumental Synagogues of Sweden, examines not just how and why these synagogues were built but looks at the deeper context of these buildings. “The aim of the study is to broaden our understanding of Swedish-Jewish history, but also Swedish architectural history, while placing it in its wider Swedish, Nordic and European context,” he explained.

To carry out this work, Daniel relies on handwritten protocols from Jewish congregations and Swedish state records. Historically, such documents have posed significant challenges for researchers due to the time required for manual transcription. By using Transkribus, he has been able to extract and analyse transcripts far more efficiently, making these previously hidden materials much more accessible. “[Transkribus] enables me to present this written material, which has been hidden in the archive for [a long time], to a broader academic audience,” Daniel said.

We wish our subscription recipients all the best for their research projects!