Miriam Schirmer
Computational Social Science, Technical University of Munich
My dissertation deals with the analysis of court transcripts of genocide trials. My focus is on the description of experiences of violence and potentially traumatizing experiences by witnesses in court. In order to analyze these texts comprehensively, I apply a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods.
A key component of my research is the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP), including through topic modeling and text classification. By combining traditional methods of historical source analysis and computational processes from the NLP field, the goal is to demonstrate digital approaches to historical and genocide research and encourage further study in this area.