Hätte ich das mal eher gewusst … mit Tomasz M. Jankowski

Can you describe your project in three sentences and explain the digital component of your work?

Archives across East Central Europe, whether in Prague, Berlin, Riga, or in Kyiv, hold nominal census lists, unique historical sources documenting hundreds of thousands of individuals. A surprising portion of these pertain to Jews, even dating back to the mid-eighteenth century. In recent years I have become curious as to whether we can draw broad insights into the demography and family history of the Ashkenazi Jews living across the entire region. In order to prepare the sources for my spatial and temporal analysis, I harmonised and standardised the digitized sources to be machine readable. My research focuses on the diversity of family arrangements, marriage patterns, and gender relations among the Jews, and on how and why these differed from those of their Christian neighbours.

Image: List of Jews living in Gdańsk in 1796. Source: Geheimes Staatsarchiv Berlin, II. HA, Abt. 9, Tit. LXVII, Sekt. 1, Nr. 11.

Added value: What was only possible or what advantages did you have because you worked digitally?

Plugging in modern digital research solutions, such as R, made my research extremely flexible. I’ve been able to develop custom-tailored ready-to-use functions performing analyses within a few seconds. Such a set up has allowed me to test working hypotheses, expand the data pool, and correct errors often at the drop of a hat. More importantly, I’ve documented the process to ensure that my research becomes entirely reproducible.

I also believe that aesthetic and clean graphics are crucial for conveying the results to the audience. The R community provides a vast array of solutions to help produce customised maps and graphs. And if you don’t know how to achieve a desired result, you can always ask the community. In other words, digital also means communal.

Graphic: Age at marriage of Jewish women in east-central Europe at the end of the 18th century.

Had you worked with digital methods before?

While writing my PhD thesis I relied on very basic digital solutions, like Excel. Although these were sufficient for the exploration and analysis of a small dataset, the entire process was quite tiresome and time-consuming. Many steps had to be constantly repeated manually. In the end I ended up with a very unstable environment, that I continued to use just out of habit.

What was your initial contact with digital methods like back then?

It was the growth of the data that primarily triggered me to introduce a programming language. It turned out that adapting old solutions to my new needs was taking longer than learning R. I first encountered R during a two-week summer school, then I took some free and paid on-line courses. It was a worthwhile investment. I soon realised that R brings additional benefits, such as greater flexibility, interoperability, and access to more advanced methods.

Digital projects are known for a steep learning curve. What are five tips you would like to give to your younger self? What do you wish you had known, what would you have done differently, what turned out to be eye-opening for you?

While enthusiasm for digital humanities seems to be ubiquitous, I am a bit more cautious. I don’t think there is some universal path to embracing the field. The main challenge is that the inclusion of digital methods in historical research requires simultaneous training in several fields: programming, statistics, and obviously history. It is hard to find an institution with a sufficiently comprehensive curriculum, especially if you research Jewish or any other ‘minority’ history. Accordingly, embarking on digital adventures is largely an individual endeavour. Therefore, my five general tips would be:

1) Making errors is a part of the game.

2) Each research project is different, digital solutions may not always be useful.

3) Talk to others, share your questions.

4) Slow down, take a deep breath, it takes time, but it will pay off eventually.

5) Make sure that the digital methods you apply provide a breakthrough in knowledge, not just the fireworks that give your research attractive appearance.

Tomasz M. Jankowski is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Eastern European Jewish History at Vilnius University, Lithuania. He is interested in social aspects of Jewish and non-Jewish entanglements in east-central Europe from early modern period to the early twentieth century. He recently published the article: Jankowski, Tomasz M. “Mapping the Jewish Family in Eighteenth-Century East-Central Europe. Diversity, Unity and in-Law Equality.” The History of the Family, September 2025, p. 1–33. doi:10.1080/1081602X.2025.2549328.

Earlier publications include: Hebrew Polish Tango (Polin Museum, 2019) and Demography of a Shtetl (2022). He has also been involved in documenting Jewish heritage for several NGOs, including UNESCO. In 2024, he was NFDI4Memory FAIR Data Fellow. (ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2695-7324)

Die Blogreihe „Hätte ich das mal eher gewusst … Was Historiker:innen und historisch arbeitende ihrem jüngeren Ich raten würden“ wird betreut durch das GHI Washington in Kooperation mit NFDI4Memory / Task Area Data Culture, dem Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands (VHD) und der Digital History Professur der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Wir freuen uns über alle, die offen über ihre Erfahrungen mit digitalen Projekten im Geschichtsbereich sprechen möchten – und Tipps geben, was sie auf jeden Fall beim nächsten Mal anders machen würden.

Sie haben / Du hast auch Interesse, einen Beitrag für die Reihe zu schreiben? Gerne! Christiane Weber (VHD/NFDI4Memory) [weber@historikerverband.de] und Katharina Hering (GHI) [hering@ghi-dc.org] freuen sich auf eine Email.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Tomasz M. Jankowski (August 15, 2025). Hätte ich das mal eher gewusst … mit Tomasz M. Jankowski. h r e f. Retrieved November 13, 2025 from https://href.hypotheses.org/5041