The University of Luxembourg (Master’s in Contemporary European History) and the Virtual Resource Centre for Knowledge about Europe (CVCE) are organising a Symposium to be held in October 2009, whose theme will be ‘Contemporary history in the digital age’.

The use of the computer and Internet in the methods, techniques and work of historians is coming under ever-wider examination. However, contemporary history as a subject has remained relatively detached from the use of digital applications for academic purposes — excepting word processing and electronic mail — and from those methodological studies linked to it.

Nonetheless, information and communication technologies can offer a number of possibilities to contemporary history studies in terms of publication, the collection of primary and secondary sources, networking, data visualisation, etc., not to forget that the Web is itself becoming an archive. The application of digital technology to the study of contemporary history is therefore destined to increase, and our discipline certain to change drastically with it.

This Symposium will focus on a simple question, but one offering complex answers: ‘Will the Web provide us with a better understanding of history?’