From Spreadsheets to Networks: Database Design as Humanities Methodology

The AFROEUROPECYBERSPACE project catalogs digital platforms created by African and Afrodescendant communities across Romance-speaking Europe. Initial data collection used spreadsheets, but fundamental research questions proved impossible to answer. We could not systematically identify authors working across multiple countries, track thematic co-occurrence patterns, or analyze platform collaboration networks. The structure could not support the queries.

This talk demonstrated why the transformation from spreadsheet to relational database was methodological necessity, not technical preference. Julia and Liam showed how database schema design forces theoretical clarity: every table represents a claim about what matters, every relationship encodes how entities connect, every controlled vocabulary reflects epistemological choices.

Using concrete examples from the catalog, they demonstrated two analyses impossible in spreadsheets: thematic co-occurrence, revealing how communities conceptually link issues like Afrofeminism and Antiracism, and collaboration networks showing transnational connections across Romance-speaking regions.

For more information on the Bremen x Oldenburg | Digital Humanities Lunchtalks series click here.