神马福利影片

Twenty-Fourth Warwick Symposium on Parish Research
Saturday 16 May 2026 - 神马福利影片
Faculty of Arts Building, FAB 5.03 (hybrid format, campus map)

Co-Hosted by Beat K眉min (Warwick History / My-Parish) and (Institute for the
Historical Geography of the Church in Poland - John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin)
with Jeanne Dufresne, Lynn Marriott & Dan Meldon (Warwick) & Artur Karpacz (Lublin)

 

The tax register of the Pozna艅 diocese from 1561, : faksimile indexed with and ,
with data on the relationships of people, places and institutions mentioned in the source.

 

Parishes belonged to one of the most developed territorial networks in medieval and modern Europe. They are documented in a range of important sources, some generated within the communities (registers of baptisms, marriages and burials; fabric / poor relief accounts; inventories), others by ecclesiastical bodies (visitation / court records; benefice registers) and secular authorities (for numerous administrative / taxation purposes). Throughout the Continent, furthermore, church buildings were filled with material culture, some of which survives. Taken together, this rich set of evidence has the potential to yield huge amounts of data on individuals, groups / institutions, socio-economic conditions, religious life, spatial organization and cultural change. Traditional source critique, machine learning applications, visualization techniques, geostatistical analyses and Digital Humanities opportunities, to name but a few, can all be used 鈥� and perhaps combined 鈥� to enhance our understanding of both parish affairs and their wider repercussions. This brings new research possibilities as well as numerous challenges, not only technologically but also methodologically and even philosophically. The 2026 Symposium sought to illustrate and reflect on these themes within broadly conceived chronological, regional and disciplinary frameworks.
 

PROGRAMME

[Directions to the 神马福利影片 and campus maps]
 
10.00 - Registrations & Coffee

10.15 - Welcome & Introduction

10.30-12.00 - Session 1: Late Medieval Approaches (chair: Beat K眉min)

Anna Pazourkov谩 (Charles University Prague & Czech Academy of Sciences):
Database of pre-Hussite Territorial Church Administration in Bohemia: Sources, Structure, and Research Potential

Nicholas Ringwood (Waipapa Taumata Rau | the University of Auckland):
Quantifying Misconduct: Data鈥怋ased Approaches to Recidivism in Late Medieval Church Court Proceedings

Beatrix F. Romh谩nyi (K谩roli G谩sp谩r University):
Parishes as Data Infrastructure: Reconstructing the Late Medieval Parish Network of the Kingdom of Hungary

Raphael Walker (University of Bern):
Digital Prosopography in the Late Medieval Diocese of Basel: The lower Clergy of the Deaneries of Sisgau and Frickgau from 1460 to 1490

 
12.15-13.00 - Session 2: Community Perspectives (chairs: Jeanne Dufresne & Daniel Meldon)

Robert Swanson (University of Birmingham):
Small Data for Small Worlds: Recording the Medieval English Parish

Felicita Tramontana (Roma Tre University):
Data-Driven Insights from the Sacramental Records of Seventeenth-Century Bethlehem

 
13.00-14.00 - Lunch

 
14.00/15.30 - Session 3: Central European Data (chair: Marek S艂o艅)

Arkadiusz Borek (Polish Academy of Sciences):
The Visibility of Parish Churches in Local Consistory Court Records in Poland: A Case Study of the Kalisz Consistory

Arthur Karpacz (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin):
What to Do with All That Data? Opportunities and Challenges in Modelling Early Modern Clergy Biographies in Lesser Poland with Linked Open Data

Konrad Ko艂odziejczyk (Polish Academy of Sciences):
Methodological Foundations and Structure of a Database of Church Servants in the Diocese of Krakow (16th鈥�18th Centuries)

B茅la Vilmos Mihalik (E枚tv枚s Lor谩nd University):
Confessional Demographic Model? Parish Records, Historical Demography, and Recatholisation in Eighteenth-Century Hungary

 
15.30/16.00 - Tea

 
16.00/16.45 - Session 4: Big Data Processing (chairs: Arthur Karpacz & Lynn Marriott)

Marek S艂o艅 (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin):
History Without Stories? Risk and Advantages of Big Parish Data

Andrew Wareham (University of Roehampton):
Women鈥檚 Voices from the Seventeenth Century. Hearth Tax Digital - Chester and Hertfordshire 1662-1664

 
17.00/18.00 - General Discussion & Outlook 

Follow on contributions to issues raised & proposals made:

• Elza C. Tiner, Thoughts on research databases
• Beat K眉min & Dan Meldon, Two responses to Elza's suggestion

• Marek S艂o艅, Reflections on 'big' parish data

 
Symposium Report (coming soon)
 

 
The Symposium has always been an inclusive forum of exchange between anyone with related research interests
from whatever background or career stage.

Call for Registrations (vertical / horizontal; now closed)

'Call for Papers' (flyer; now closed)

Further information: b.kumin@warwick.ac.uk & marek.slon@kul.pl

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