41 I Street Memories: An interdisciplinary project on urban life and transport history

7. April 2018
16:00–17:30
Seminarraum 4

Manuela Winder (Wien)
The interdisciplinary project Vienna’s Streets: Changing Use through (De-)Motorization. An introduction

Takeru Shibayama (Wien)
Development of an interactive online tool for foto-analysis and display

Carmen Gruber (Wien)
Public History: Chances and Challenges

><  Panel in englischer Sprache

The panel focuses on the interdisciplinary project "Vienna’s Streets: Changing Use through (De-)Motorization" carried out in 2016/17 by four junior scientists of TU Wien, WU Wien and Uni Wien represented in the panel. The goal of the project was to do a historical analysis of the changing use of streets in Vienna as an urban living space and as a transportation space between 1860 and 1950. As primary source-material historical photos were used and analyzed. The conceptual framework and the results of the project will be presented. Further, based on practical experiences, theoretical considerations regarding the additional benefit of interdisciplinarity, both on the team-level and on the results-level will be addressed. Finally, and also based on practical experiences due to the project' research design, the potential as well as (methodological) challenges and limits of leaving the often cited academic ivory tower and collaborate with public communities in the frame of (historical) academic research will be discussed.

Chair: Kathrin Raminger (Wien)

Manuela Winder (Wien): The interdisciplinary project Vienna’s Streets: Changing Use through (De-)Motorization. An introduction

In this talk, the conceptual framework of the project will be presented. Initial considerations, research objectives and the methodological approach will be addressed. A main focus will be given to the decision to use historical photographs as the primary source for the research. Theoretical and practical challenges when analyzing historical photographs will be discussed and the methodology of historical photo analysis applied by the project team will be presented. Based on practical experiences, theoretical considerations regarding the additional benefit of interdisciplinarity regarding disciplines as seemingly distant like Transport Planning and Traffic Engineering and (Contemporary / Urban) History, both on the Team-level and on the results-level will be addressed and the cooperation of different universities will be discussed. Finally, the results of the project will be presented according to the research interests and the perspective of the different disciplines involved.

Takeru Shibayama (Wien): Development of an interactive online tool for foto-analysis and display

Part of the project’s aim was to create a prototype of an interactive online tool which can be used both for carrying out the historical photo analysis and as a medium to display the project’s outcome to an interested audience. This prototype was developed and tested during the project, and improved after the completion of it with the feedback gained through the works. In this talk, conceptualization and realization of this tool will be presented, with a focus on how the key data and information needed for our photo analysis is embedded and interlinked on this digital platform. Possibilities of future application both for research and for non-profit as well as for commercial use will be demonstrated.

Carmen Gruber (Wien): Public History: Chances and Challenges

This talk will discuss the potential but also the (methodological) challenges and limits of leaving the often cited academic ivory tower and collaborate with public communities in the frame of (historical) academic research. How can academic research make use und profit of the exchange with the non-academic public and private communities? In which cases can such a collaboration be useful? And what would be the role of academics in these cooperations? “Crowd Sourcing” and the use of private archives for (online databases) or Oral History will be addressed as possible fields of cooperation, which could be of worth especially for Urban-History or the history of local communities.