About the Project

About the Project

Project Goals

This project advances the prototype development of an open-access digital platform designed to support interdisciplinary research on violent crime in the early modern period. The platform combines a structured, standards-based database with integrated analytical and geospatial tools, enabling users to aggregate, visualize, and analyze data derived from archival sources. By creating shared digital infrastructure, the project facilitates data reuse, interoperability, and collaborative scholarship across institutional and disciplinary boundaries.

Upon completion in late Summer 2026, the platform will allow users to search, map, and export data according to multiple variables, including location, gender, weapon, and legal classification. The site will also provide documentation and pedagogical resources to support archival interpretation and digital research methods. This project demonstrates the potential of digital humanities approaches to expand access to historical sources, support new forms of scholarly inquiry, and create sustainable infrastructure for future research and teaching.

History of the Project

Amanda Madden and Colin Rose began conceiving of Modeling and Mapping Violence in Early Modern Italy over a coffee at the Renaissance Society of America conference. Drawing on their expertise in the history of violence and digital spatial analysis, they began by identifying datasets suitable for spatial history methods, assessing necessary resources, and consulting with potential collaborators and users.

During the 2022–23 academic year, Madden and Jason Heppler partnered with a Junior Capstone Team at the Georgia Institute of Technology to develop an early website prototype, including a design mock-up and initial codebase. Junior Capstone teams collaborate with clients to produce proof-of-concept projects for academic credit. The prototype code was deposited in the RRCHNM GitHub repository for open reuse. Rachel Midura and Andrew Vidali joined the project as co-principal investigators in 2023.

Amanda Madden was awarded a CHSS seed grant for the school year 2025-26 to work with Jason Heppler to refine the data model and prototype the database and the mapping interface.

Archival Research and Data Collection

In 2022, Madden, supported by grants from the Delmas Foundation for Venetian Studies and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University, conducted archival research in Bologna, Modena, Verona, Vicenza, and Venice, digitizing a broad range of criminal records. Colin Rose undertook complementary research in Florence during the summers of 2022 and 2023.

Archival materials were selected for their richness and compatibility with spatial analysis, with attention to metadata such as dates, gender, age, occupation, relationships between victims and assailants, motives, weapons used, sentencing, and—crucially—locations that could be georeferenced. Additional digitization efforts by Rose, Rachel Midura, and Andrew Vidali have expanded the dataset with sources from Venice, Padua, and Florence.