Join us on Thursday, May 28th, from 14-16 hrs (German time) for the third RUSTLab lecture of this summer term. Suzette van Haaren will present her work on “The Virtual Library: What the Digital Reconstruction of the Bibliotheca Palatina Can Tell Us About How We Imagine Libraries”.
This paper examines the digital reconstruction of the Bibliotheca Palatina — the celebrated medieval library of Heidelberg looted during the Thirty Years’ War — as a historiographical act. Drawing on the concept of virtuality, it argues that the digital project does not only reconstruct a lost collection but actively constructs one, reproducing narratives of fragmentation, national heritage, and longed-for reunification of the lost library. By tracing the library’s cultural life from its looting in 1622 through 19th-century Romanticism to its 21st-century digitisation, the paper shows how information systems encode interpretive and political choices that are often presented as purely technical ones.
Suzette van Haaren is a postdoctoral researcher at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (SFB 1567 Virtuelle Lebenswelten, TP B02 ‘Virtuelles Mittelalter’). She completed her PhD at the University of St Andrews and the University of Groningen in 2022 on medieval manuscript digitisation and ‘digital codicology’, now also published as a book at Brill (’The Digital Medieval Manuscript’). Her research focuses on the place of heritage objects in an increasingly digital world, with a strong emphasis on materiality and theory, and the social and scientific implications of digitising historical artefacts. Her current research project investigates how the increasing integration of digital and virtual realms is reshaping the landscape of research practices. She holds an MA in Medieval Studies and a BA in Art History from Utrecht University.
Location: on campus (MB 4/165) and Zoom
Zoom Link
PW: RUSTlab
You will find additional resources and information on this term’s guiding theme Scattered Grounds here on our website.