EpiMedDat: an Open Data Collection on Medieval Disease Outbreaks

Martin Bauch & Thomas Wozniak (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, GWZO)

All quantifying and many qualitative approaches to pre-modern epidemic history, especially the history of the plague, are based on uncritical repertories of narrative sources compiled in the 19th century. Our EpiMedDat project, conceived as a media wiki, aims to develop a platform that remedies this situation and, on the one hand, creates a source-critically transparent text basis for historical-qualitative work and, on the other hand, takes into account and opens up new potentials for the quantification of historical sources. The pilot project aims to open up to the medieval and medical history community in the near future.