BIG DATA MINING, ONTOLOGY DESIGN, SEMANTIC INTEROPERABILITY, EXOTIC DRUG TRAJECTORIES, CULTURAL HERITAGE. THE PROJECT aims to develop a context-aware search engine which will serve two purposes: 1) It fosters the research capacities of scholars in the field of digital humanities, and 2) can profitably be exploited by the creative industry and other stakeholders. By using spatiotemporal metadata gathered in TIME CAPSULEs semantic interoperable ontology, for the first time long-term developments and transformations can be analyzed in big data collections, both diachronically and synchronically. TIME CAPSULE will gather data from ten disparate cultural heritage databases into a single, autonomous database from which data can be retrieved in a unified manner. This will enable us to aggregate a variety of dissimilar but contextually related digital heritage items in an accessible way. TIME CAPSULE uses innovative computational and information methodology to build the semantic interoperable ontology with a multimedia search engine using geographical and temporal metadata. The resulting birds eye view of a wide range of structured and related heritage data will provide new insights and raise interdisciplinary research questions, that are useful within the context of current and future efforts to build digital national thesaurus resources as part of a cultural commonwealth. Data sets relating to the early modern history of medicinal plants in the Low Countries (i.e. 1550-1850) will be used as proof of concept. The research on semantic interoperability and historical research of therapeutic drugs will come together in TIME CAPSULE, in order to generate new perspectives on the circulation of botanical and medico-pharmaceutical knowledge in the early modern world.

Dutch drug policies since the Second World War have oscillated between tolerance and repression of drug use. However, whether tolerant or restrictive, pragmatic or moralistic, from a historical perspective drug policies in the Netherlands have shown a structural undercurrent of increasing regulation, despite their internationally (in)famous reputation in leading in the decriminalization of drug use and in harm-reduction public health policies. In other Western countries, too, increased institutionalised interventions in drug use have gone hand in hand with fluctuations in strategies and approaches. The development of, and swings within, the regulatory imperative have been inadequately explained, as researchers are focused too narrowly on a univocal - and unique - national drug policy-making process. Current studies, moreover, often lack historical depth. In contrast, this project broadens the research scope and investigates drug regulation in the Netherlands as historically resulting from the interaction with several important areas: the development of drug economies, shifting public perceptions about drug use, and the dynamics of local drug politics. How and to what extent did these economic and socio-cultural settings, and differentiated forms of policy-making, influence and modify Dutch drug regulation? Within this project we will explain the development and intensification of drug regulatory regimes in the post-war period. Moreover and crucially, we will relate Dutch drug regulatory regimes to European and transnational developments. Finally, the results of this innovative approach and its implications for research and policy will be integrally disseminated and discussed, with both academic colleagues and public stakeholders in the Netherlands and in Europe.

De Dubois-collectie, met haar beroemde ‘Javamens’-fossielen, heeft grote wetenschappelijke waarde, maar heeft door haar koloniale oorsprongsgeschiedenis een omstreden betekenis. Dit project ontwikkelt een theoretisch kader voor dergelijke koloniale paleoantropologische collecties, terwijl het tegelijkertijd de ‘Javamens’ fossielen nieuwe wetenschappelijke context geeft. Bevordering van wederzijds begrip onder belanghebbenden vermindert spanningen en vergemakkelijkt wetenschappelijke samenwerking. Ons onderzoek levert informatie aan museum tentoonstellingen en mediakanalen, met de nadruk op de koloniale geschiedenis, uiteenlopende betekenissen en wetenschappelijke relevantie van deze fossielen. Gelijktijdig versterken investeringen in Indonesische expertise en infrastructuur de vakgebieden wetenschapsgeschiedenis en paleoantropologie en bevorderen ze de academische gelijkheid van Nederland en Indo

Research has demonstrated that Germany was able to play a leading role in the study of the high atmosphere between 1896 and 1933 because of the decentralised organisation of German meteorology. In particular, competition among German states played an important role in this development, even more so than competition between Germany and other European states. This contributed to a new European ‘physics of the free atmosphere’. Besides the decentralised organisation of meteorology, the growing role of meteorology at many German universities as well as the growing market for weather consumers provided an ideal breeding ground.

This project uses digital technologies to analyze the role of reference cultures in debates about social issues and collective identities, looking specifically at the emergence of the United States in public discourse in the Netherlands from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the Cold War. It introduces the concept of reference culture as a crucial addition to the humanities toolbox to discuss long-term asymmetrical processes of cultural exchange involving dimensions of power and hegemony. The concept recognizes the fact that some cultures assume a dominant role in the international circulation of knowledge and practices, offering or imposing a model that others imitate, adapt, or resist. More specifically, the project will add to our understanding of the global position of the Netherlands as a knowledge-based economy thriving on the innovation that emerges from international cultural encounters. Reference cultures are mental constructs that do not necessarily represent a geopolitical reality with an internal hierarchy and recognizable borders. These culturally conditioned images of trans-national models are typically established and negotiated in public discourses over a long period of time. However, the specific historical dynamics of reference cultures have never been systematically analyzed and hence are not fully understood. To explore these dynamics, this project asks three interrelated questions. (1) How were ideas, products and practices associated with the United States valued in Dutch public discourse between 1890 and 1990? (2) How can e-tools be used to map trends and changes in relation to the economic power, cultural acceptance, and scientific and technological impact of the United States as reference culture? (3) How does public discourse reflect and influence the emergence and impact of reference cultures? We propose that the key to understanding the emergence and dominance of reference cultures is to chart the public discourse in which these collective frames of reference are established. The availability of a large digital data collection in the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) enables us for the first time to study long-term developments and transformations in these national discourses in a systematic, longitudinal, and quantifiable way by using innovative text-mining tools. These ?e-research? tools allow us to test the value of qualitative heuristic models and to pair them in a meaningful fashion with quantitative methodology. This will demonstrate that conclusions based on large quantifiable data sets concerning public debates open new vistas in humanities research because they (a) provide a robust framework for contextualizing conclusions based on ?traditional? qualitative research; and (b) directly complement numerical data sets provided by other researchers, for example on economic and social trends.