Jeroen Kole was awarded a bursary to attend the Applied Data Analysis strand of the Digital Humanities Oxford Summer School in 2025. To join the mailing list and learn about the next summer school sign up here. Read about Jeroen's experience at the summer school here:
Thanks to the generous SPQR bursary, a long-held ambition to attend the Digital Humanities Oxford Summer School became a reality this year. From 4–8 August 2025, I joined the Applied Data Analysis workshop strand, held at St Anne’s College, Oxford.
The course provided an intensive and rewarding week of learning, focusing on Python for data wrangling, analysis, and visualisation. A special mention goes to our strand lecturers, Paul Guhennec and Ellen Charlesworth. Their expertise in Python was matched only by their remarkable patience in answering the seemingly endless stream of questions from participants. They managed to balance in-depth technical teaching with an accessible, step-by-step approach, making the course goals feel achievable even for those with little coding experience.
Thanks to this approach, attending the Applied Data Analysis strand was not only a chance to develop technical skills, but also to reflect on how these methods can be applied in my own research. The practical exercises, ranging from basic data cleaning to more advanced statistical modelling, provided both immediate takeaways and a solid foundation for further exploration. In the weeks since the summer school, I have already been able to implement several of the techniques in my analysis of probate and inheritance data, which has significantly improved the speed of my workflow. This, in turn, will hopefully help me complete my PhD within the coming year.
Beyond the classroom, the Summer School offered a range of social and cultural events that showcased Oxford at its best. Highlights included a welcome reception in the beautiful Blackwell Hall of the Weston Library and a banquet dinner at St Hilda’s College. Between workshop sessions, there were ample opportunities to connect with fellow attendees during coffee breaks and lunches in the welcoming dining hall at St Anne’s.
What struck me most was the overall openness and kindness of the digital humanities community. Even as a historian, working theoretically outside their core field but applying many of their methods, I felt completely welcome. There was a genuine enthusiasm for sharing knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, and a real sense of curiosity about how digital tools can be applied to different areas of research. It was valuable to learn alongside participants from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds, which highlighted how digital methods can spark connections across fields that might otherwise remain separate.
I left Oxford motivated, with a notebook full of new techniques to try, a renewed confidence in my ability to work with Python, and a network of new colleagues in the digital humanities community. My thanks go to the SPQR bursary for making this experience possible, and to the organisers, lecturers, and fellow participants for a week that was as enjoyable as it was intellectually enriching.
