Index 2.0

Description

Summary | The second one-day practical student workshop of the Index 2.0 project was held on Tuesday 19 September 2023 at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Lodz. Participating students gained hands-on experience with Roman law and digital humanities, and contributed to the prototype design of a data entry and database interface.

Background | The Index 2.0 project aims to revive the Index Interpolationum, a giant work from the early 20th century that brings together centuries of scholarship on Emperor Justinian's compendium of ancient Roman law, the Digest (533 CE). The Index closely examines each line of the Digest, considering their authenticity, and provides alternative readings, which may greatly affect our understanding of ancient Roman law.

Index 2.0 | The goal of the Index 2.0 project is to bring the Index Interpolationum into the digital age. By making the Digest text interactive and allowing users to switch between different readings of the sources, it will enable them to reconstruct the text, style, and doctrine of ancient jurists, as well as record their own insights about textual authenticity on a platform that will become an online meeting point of Roman legal scholarship. The project was envisaged by an international team of Roman law researchers, Marton Ribary (Royal Holloway), Joanna Kulawiak-Cyrankowska (Lodz) and Giuseppe Di Donato (Edinburgh Napier). The current workshop received funding from the Vice-Rector for Research, dr hab. Łukasz Jan Korporowicz, prof. UŁ, the Vice-Rector for International Relations, prof. dr hab. Łukasz Bogucki, and the Head of the Department of Roman Law of the University of Lodz, prof. dr hab. Anna Pikulska-Radomska.

Workshop | Following an experimental workshop held at Royal Holloway, University of London in April 2023, this one-day English-language workshop took a further step towards creating a relational database which makes the digital revival of the Index Interpolationum possible. Participants attended an information session about the Index and its extraordinary relevance to Roman law research. We discussed prospective case studies in the history and doctrine of Roman law which the envisioned digital version will make possible. For this part of the workshop, dr hab. Maciej Jońca, prof. US (Szczecin), dr hab. Łukasz Jan Korporowicz, prof. UŁ, and dr hab. Dagmara Skrzywanek-Jaworska, prof. UŁ join us in the computer lab. Participants received training in how to decode the shorthand of text critical comments in the printed version of the Index and how to then encode them to a relational database with a custom-made data entry interface created with Google Sheets, data validation, and Google AppScript. On either side of the lunch break, participants tested the data entry interface with and without supervision. In a concluding feedback session, participants discussed the experience and made recommendations for improving the ease and speed (or any other aspect) of the process.

Period	19 Sept 2023
Event type	Workshop
Location	Lodz, PolandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	Local