Category: Participants

  • NOVOSELAC Veronika and SABOTIČ Ines

    The Collector’s Canon: Ivan Ulčnik and Amateur Prosopography in Zagreb (1934–1955)

    Ivan Ulčnik (1880–1963) was not a professional historian, but a municipal tax official in the municipality of Zagreb, the founder and long-serving president of the Society of Zagreb Citizens and a tireless collector. His archive, comprising seventeen boxes of newspaper clippings, photographs, postcards, and notes, has been described as a “small encyclopedia of Zagreb”. Between 1934 and 1955, he published approximately seventy biographical and thematic articles in the journal Zagreb (Review of the Society of Zagreb Citizens), devoted to mayors, parliamentary representatives, entrepreneurs, artists, noble families.

    This paper examines Ulčnik’s contributions as a form of amateur prosopography and as a practice of shaping Zagreb’s urban collective memory. The corpus is analysed on two levels: first, through the individuals and themes that Ulčnik considered worthy of remembrance, and second, through the ways in which he represented them. The individuals are classified according to the social and professional category, geographical origin, gender, period of activity, and type of entry. The articles themselves are analysed with regard to Ulčnik’s criteria of selection, narrative strategies, and use of sources. The paper thus seeks to demonstrate how Ulčnik’s choices contributed to the formation of a Zagreb-based collector’s canon and to explore how he understood and evaluated the urban and national elites of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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    Veronika Novoselac is Teaching Assistant at the Department of History of the Catholic University of Croatia in Zagreb. She graduated in History at the Catholic University of Croatia and in Communication Studies. She is currently enrolled in the postgraduate (doctoral) program in History.

    E-mail: veronika.novoselac@unicath.hr

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    Ines Sabotič is Full Professor at the University Department of History – Catholic University of Croatia. She graduated, obtained her master’s and PhD at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She has been employed since 2012 at the University, where she served as Vice-rector for Academic Affairs, Head of the Department of History, Head of the Doctoral Programme in History and has taken on other responsibilities.

    E-mail: ines.sabotic@unicath.hr

  • MEHDIZADE Aykhan

    Digital Analysis of the 1897 Imperial Census: Educational Patterns in the Governorates of Elisavetpol and Baku

    The Russian Imperial Census of 1897 remains one of the most comprehensive demographic resources for the study of the South Caucasus in the late nineteenth century. The census data of the Elisavetpol and Baku governorates, despite their considerable scholarly potential, have seldom been the subject of systematic digital analysis, and the educational dimensions of this source have received particularly limited attention. The present paper is a prosopographic and quantitative study of literacy and educational data recorded in the 1897 census in the two governorates under consideration. The study is based on the original published volumes stored in the Presidential Library of Russia.

    The census recorded a variety of educationally relevant variables, including literacy in different languages, the language of instruction and attendance at confessional and secular schools. The paper reconstructs collective educational profiles of the population by ethnic, religious, gender and administrative categories by digitizing and structuring this data. The resulting data set permits a comparative analysis of literacy rates between the urban and rural population, as well as between the two governorates as different administrative and socio-economic units.

    The paper raises several important questions: What was the educational level of the different communities of the Baku and Elisavetpol governorates? What can we learn about social stratification, access to imperial institutions and the role of confessional networks in education from patterns of literacy and schooling? And how does the 1897 census, when approached through the digital prosopographical methods, become a tool for reconstructing collective social identities, not just a collection of individual statistics?

    Methodologically, the paper draws on the framework of digital prosopography, conceptualising census entries not as individual data points but as structured biographical traces which, when aggregated, trace out the contours of social groups. Through the use of relational data modelling and visualisation techniques, the analysis maps educational geographies across the two governorates, revealing patterns that have been largely overlooked by traditional narrative historiographies. The paper also reflects on the methodological challenges inherent in working with imperial census data: questions of categorisation, the politics of enumeration, linguistic complexity and the limitations of self-reported data. In so doing, it engages with broader discussions in the field of digital prosopography on source criticism and the epistemological stakes of quantitative approaches to historical populations.

    The study situates the 1897 census in the broader history of education in the South Caucasus and provides a model for the application of digitized imperial statistical sources for prosopographical research of regions that are still underrepresented in digital humanities scholarship.

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    Aykhan Mehdizade is a researcher at the Institute of History and Ethnology of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS). His research interests are centred on the social and educational history of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Azerbaijan, with a focus on imperial census sources and digital methods in historical demography.

    E-mail: ayxan.mehdizade@gmail.com

  • MEDEN Ahac and ŠMAJDEK Uroš

    Visualizing Data Uncertainty in the PZSBL

    Historical databases, by their very nature, contain information that is incomplete, ambiguous, imprecise, or internally inconsistent. The Database of the Slovenian Biographical Lexicon (PZSBL) discussed here brings together data on individuals, including biographical events such as births and deaths, name variants, occupations and activities, related persons, and the sources from which this information was obtained. A more in-depth consideration of uncertainty in such a database not only contributes to a better understanding of historical events, but can also facilitate the generation of new knowledge and data through auxiliary tools such as visualisations.

    Previous research on uncertainty in cultural-historical collections (Windhager et al., 2019) has shown that uncertainty can occur across various data dimensions, including temporal, relational, spatial, and provenance dimensions. Building on this approach, we propose a two-level model for defining uncertainty in the PZSBL database: provenance uncertainty and data uncertainty.

    Provenance uncertainty describes uncertainty associated with the characteristics of data sources. We consider whether a source is primary or secondary, as well as its type, such as a manuscript, interview, questionnaire, lexicon, etc. We also record uncertainty at the level of the individual source, focusing on the quality of the data obtained from that source and assessed to date. This makes it possible to adjust uncertainty estimates interactively.

    Data uncertainty describes uncertainty arising from the characteristics of the data themselves. At the level of an individual person, it takes into account factors such as the completeness of the record, the amount of available biographical information, missing attributes, and similarities or ambiguities between different entries. This enables us to identify individuals who are more difficult to identify with confidence due to the limited amount of information available about them. It also allows us to define uncertainty arising from a high degree of similarity between the data associated with two or more individuals, where it cannot be established with certainty whether the records refer to the same person or to several different people.

    We also consider data uncertainty at the level of individual attributes. In the case of names, we distinguish less certain forms of representation, such as abbreviations and pseudonyms. For locations, uncertainty may arise from ambiguous historical place names or from the specification of a broader region rather than a precise location. Dates may be represented only by a year, a time span, or an approximate temporal designation. Attributes such as occupation or activity may likewise be less certain due to non-standardised or inconsistent definitions. A particular case of data uncertainty arises when multiple sources provide conflicting information. Its assessment therefore depends on the provenance certainty of the sources, the number of sources, and the degree of agreement between them, while also accounting for the possibility that inaccurate information may be repeated across the majority of identified sources.

    The two dimensions are complementary: provenance uncertainty describes the reliability of individual sources, while data uncertainty describes how comprehensively and unambiguously an individual is represented in the database. Together, they provide a basis for the structured assessment of uncertainty at the level of individual persons and for the further development of computational and visualisation methods for quantifying and representing uncertainty.

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    Ahac Meden is a researcher at the Institute of Cultural History (IKZ) at ZRC SAZU, the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. He serves as subject editor for popular culture, media arts, and new media, as well as technical editor of the online edition of The New Slovenian Biographical Lexicon. He graduated in Cultural Studies from the University of Ljubljana in 2007 and obtained a master’s degree in Social Communication from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona in 2009. His doctoral research in anthropology focuses on the phenomenology of data in the context of digital humanities and open science.

    E-mail: ahac.meden@zrc-sazu.si

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    Uroš Šmajdek is a doctoral student, early-stage researcher, and teaching assistant at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana. He received his bachelor’s degree in Computer and Information Science in 2020 and his master’s degree in 2023, with a thesis on interactive physically based rendering. His current research focuses primarily on visualisation, digital humanities, and language technologies, while his broader interests include history, computer graphics, and game technology.

    E-mail: uros.smajdek@fri.uni-lj.si

  • MASSARO Francesca Luigia

    On the Trail of Returns. For a Study of Veterans in the Long Post-War Period in Italy (1945–1960): Potentiality and Challenges

    The paper aims to present a methodological reflection of prosopographic interest around a specific case study: Italian veterans of the Second World War in the post-war period. The most important source was a group of diaries and memoirs (differing in terms of writing style and timing), which reconstruct the biographies of around fifty Italian veterans who, following military defeats, experienced war imprisonment. These biographies were compared with other types of sources, from printed sources to documents from institutional and political party archives.

    The group of veterans analyzed came from different prison camps, namely, those held by British or Russian forces. The following study intertwines the twenty-year Fascist period, the years of conflict and imprisonment, and above all the years following the end of the conflict, particularly the first decade of the Italian Republic.

    The sources used were interrogated through the following questions: Who were these veterans? What was their geographical origin, social background and level of education? What was their relationship with Italian Fascism and the violence of war? These questions aim to reconstruct the first part of veterans’ biographies. At this point, the next questions were: what was the return like for these former prisoners? How did they adapt to their new life of peace and how did they respond to the birth of the Republic? To what extent did their geographical origin, social class, and level of education influence the different political orientations adopted during the post-Second World War reconstruction years? What “paths” did their memories follow over time? And what measures were adopted and what memory policies were developed by the Italian Republic in subsequent years around the veterans?

    The study of Italian veterans brings with it both potentialities and challenges. The analysis of this collective biography highlights several long-period historiographical issues. Furthermore, the comparative study of different profiles allows to reconstruct a broad and complex picture of the group as well as to identify common characteristics, general lines and internal connection networks. The methodological potential is closely intertwined with the challenges, as the extreme variety of subjects makes immediate attempts at synthesis and universalization difficult. The use and cross-referencing of different types of sources – from the ”ego documents” to the classic administrative and statistical sources – appears to be the most fruitful way for a prosopographic investigation, combining essential quantitative analysis with thoughtful qualitative analysis.

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    Francesca Luigia Massaro is a PhD student in Historical Studies at the University of Milan, Department of Historical Studies “Federico Chabod”. The title of her research project is: From captivity to return: Italian veterans between history, representations and memory (1945–1960), Supervisor: Prof. Claudia Baldoli, Co-Supervisor: Prof. Irene Piazzoni. Her research interests focus on the political, social and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention to the periods of the First World War, the twenty years of Fascism, the Second World War and the second Italian post-war period.

    E-mail: francesca.massaro@unimi.it

  • MAKRYGIORGOU Eleni

    Modelling the Friction of Identity: A Semantic Analysis of Inquisition and Material Culture in Sixteenth-Century Venice

    This study develops a semantic prosopographical framework for representing contested identity in early modern Venetian Greek networks. Under the imperative of producing FAIR historical data, the CIDOC-CRM ontological framework has become a dominant solution for re-expressing archival material in a semantically structured format. Yet its event-centric architecture remains limited in representing the performative and context-dependent nature of identity in historical documentation. This study argues that identity in early modern sources is negotiated, institutionalized, and often contested. It therefore asks: how can semantic modelling account for identity as a context-bound performance embedded in judicial and material records?

    The project examines ontology use in a microhistorical reconstruction of a Greek prosopographical network in Venice, proposing a modelling strategy grounded in institutional facts and speech act theory. Rather than treating identity as static, this approach encodes it as the outcome of assertions, accusations, categorizations, and symbolic actions articulated by different actors. The strategy is tested through a microhistorical study of Greek identity in Venice between 1560 and 1600, using a curated dataset of Inquisition trials and household inventories. The implementation leverages AAAo (https://www.sari.uzh.ch/en/ordea/aaao.html), a CRMbase extension, to represent layered assertions, perspectival statements, and recursive identity claims that conventional event-based modelling does not adequately capture.

    Inquisition documents map strategically deployed identities: accusations, confessions, negotiations, and condemnations all produce formally recorded identity positions. These are inherently relational and shift depending on speaker, authority, and circumstance. By contrast, domestic inventories provide insight into material agency and self-fashioning – icons, garments, books, and ritual objects that signal affiliation beyond institutional categorization. Linking these disparate archival fonds within a knowledge graph reveals structured tensions between institutional attribution and domestic practice.

    The case of Manusso Marà, a Candiot physician accused of Lutheranism, illustrates this friction. His intellectual curiosity was reframed by inquisitors as “Lutheranism”. While trial records foreground suspicion and non-conformity, his inventory situates him within a learned Greek milieu, surrounded by texts and objects. Modelling both documentary strands exposes identity not as assimilation or resistance alone, but as a dynamic interplay between institutional imposition and material persistence – what this study conceptualizes as material resilience. This case illustrates how a single individual’s prosopographical profile is constructed through contradictory institutional and material attestations. To formally represent these dynamics, new ontological extensions have been developed to encode symbolic acts, expressions of intent, accusations, and condemnations as structured assertions rather than simple event descriptions. Ultimately, this framework demonstrates how FAIR-aligned semantic infrastructures can accommodate perspectivism, advancing both early modern Mediterranean identity studies and digital historical methodology.

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    Eleni Makrygiorgou is a PhD candidate at the University of Teramo, specialising in the social fabric of the intra-Greek community. Her research focuses on the intersection of microhistory and formal knowledge representation, particularly the challenges of modelling complex identities within the CIDOC-CRM framework. Her current paleography experience in cross-fonds archival research at the State Archive of Venice (ASVe) for Greek and Venetian paleography is assisting her in exploring the use of ontological extensions (AAAo) to capture institutional agency and historical speech acts.

    E-mail: emakrygiorgou@unite.it

  • JANKOVIĆ BARBARIĆ Valentina

    Nobility as Patrons and Consumers of Cultural Goods: Insights from Family Archival Records

    Cultural, social, intellectual, and spiritual patronage constituted one of the key elements in the construction and representation of noble identity in early modern Europe. As members of the social elite, noble families not only acted as patrons and commissioners of artistic and cultural production but also participated actively in the consumption of a wide range of cultural goods, luxury commodities, and everyday material objects. In doing so, they formed an important segment of the clientele upon which networks of artisans, merchants, and other intermediaries depended.

    This paper examines these processes through the analysis of archival records preserved in the family fonds of three noble families whose estates were located in continental Croatia: the Vojkffy, Sermage, and Čikulini families. The study is primarily based on craftsmen’s and merchants’ accounts, inventories, property registers, and related documentation preserved within the respective family archives. By focusing on the surviving evidence of acquisition, commission, and consumption, the paper seeks to assess the potential of private family archives as sources for the study of noble patronage and material culture. Particular attention is devoted to the types of documents that have survived, the patterns of purchasing and commissioning they reveal, and the categories of goods and services that occupied a prominent place in the economic and representational strategies of noble households.

    More broadly, the paper addresses the relationship between patronage, consumption, and the construction of aristocratic identity. It explores the everyday practices through which patronage was enacted and examines how accounting records, inventories, and property registers can illuminate the aspirations, values, and social ambitions that underpinned noble engagement with cultural production and consumption. In doing so, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the role of material culture in the processes of social representation and self-fashioning among the early modern nobility.

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    Valentina Janković Barbarić received her PhD in Early Modern History from the University of Zagreb in 2013. She currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the Catholic University of Croatia in Zagreb. Her research interests encompass the cultural and social history of the early modern period, the history and identities of noble families, and the history of everyday life. She is currently a member of the Croatian Science Foundation project Models of Patronage: Patrons, Artists, and Audiences in Zagreb in the Seventeenth and the Long Eighteenth Century, which explores the dynamics of cultural patronage and artistic production in early modern Zagreb.

    E-mail: valentina.jankovic@unicath.hr

  • JANKAUSKAS Vytas

    Prosopography and the Study of Legendary Narrative (The Case of the Lithuanian Chronicles)

    Prosopographical methodology is used only to a very limited extent in Lithuanian historiography. It represents a relatively new methodological approach to the study of Lithuanian history. This approach can be fruitfully applied to the study of legendary history. The Lithuanian chronicles preserve a legendary historical narrative ranging from the settlement of the Lithuanian elite in Lithuania to the times of the authors who compiled the chronicles. A significant part of this narrative is clearly legendary. The problem arises from the fact that some accounts refer to real historical individuals who are nevertheless embedded within the legendary or semi-legendary sections of the narrative. This situation calls for the development of a new methodological framework. A prosopographical approach to these issues may prove highly productive.

    Prosopographical analysis would allow for a clear structuring and reconstruction of the collective image of the legendary hero. The application of this method to questions of legendary history could, at least in part, rehabilitate legendary history as a valid object of historical inquiry. It is generally under-researched, with only isolated fragments typically being analysed. Within legendary history, it is possible to distinguish not only mythical or legendary plots but also, through them, to reconstruct certain historical processes. This requires, however, different analytical approaches.

    The content of the chronicles is not random. It is based on Lithuanian historical folklore and incorporates historical war songs, which allows us to develop a model for interpreting legendary heroes. The application of prosopographical methods in this context would be particularly productive. It would make it possible to construct a collective representation of the legendary hero, through which the characteristics of legendary narratives could be systematically analysed. The identification of semi-legendary narrative layers and the comparison of prosopographies would be particularly useful for testing such a model.

    This paper is devoted to addressing the problem of interpreting the least clearly defined intersections between legendary and historical narrative traditions.

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    Vytas Jankauskas, PhD in History (since 2011), conducts research on the social structures, historiography, and Christianization of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He is the author of two monographs dedicated to the study of the Lithuanian elite, has published approximately sixty scholarly articles, and has presented papers at conferences in nearly all European countries.

    E-mail: vytas.jankauskas@gmail.com

  • HRIBERŠEK Matej

    The Historical Chronicle Bosnia Seraphica by Fr. Maurus Fajdiga as a Prosopographic Source

    Between 1777 and 1780, the Franciscan friar Maurus Fajdiga wrote the historical chronicle Bosnia Seraphica. Across three volumes totalling 1,238 pages, he presented the history of the Franciscan order from their arrival of the Minor Brothers in the Balkans up to his own time, as well as the history of the fifteen Franciscan monasteries existing at that time. The manuscript is currently held in the archives of the Slovenian Franciscan Province of the Holy Cross in Ljubljana. In addition to a historical account of the Franciscans’ activities and numerous historical facts, the work also features profiles of individuals who left a special mark on the history of the Order and significantly shaped its course. Among them are prominent representatives of the Order who later became saints, as well as certain provincial superiors who oversaw both the material and spiritual development of the province, individuals noted for their religious zeal, and numerous lesser-known names – individual friars who, through their special merits, feats, or exceptional personal qualities, brought fame both to themselves and to the Order. Bosnia Seraphica is a fine example of a prosopographic source that requires an interdisciplinary approach; only the interweaving of various levels of research and elements allows us to arrive at reliable results. It is a veritable treasure trove of names of figures who played an important role in this historical development. Here we find not only the numerous members of the Franciscan Order, of whom hundreds are mentioned, but also a constellation of names from the political, military, and social elites, as well as many people from the ranks of the common folk who were connected in various ways to the history of the Franciscans. Some individuals are merely mentioned, while others are the subject of more extensive chapters; descriptions of certain figures are scattered throughout various parts of this comprehensive work. The work itself also serves as a prosopographic source for understanding the author Maurus Fajdiga, the purpose of his work, and its impact. This paper will present the significance of Bosnia Seraphica as a prosopographic source, the various challenges encountered in its analysis, the advantages and disadvantages of traditional and contemporary digital approaches to prosopographic research on the work, and several practical prosopographic examples it offers.

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    Dr. Matej Hriberšek is an Associate Professor of Latin and Greek at the Department of Classics, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. His areas of expertise include Greek and Latin grammar, didactics, ancient metrics, rhetoric, history of linguistics, lexicography, literary translation, late Latin, medieval and modern Latin literature. He is the author of numerous scientific articles, seven monographs, editor-in-chief of the Latin-Slovenian and revised Greek-Slovenian dictionary, member of the International Commission for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, member of the editorial board of the journals Monitor ISH and Studia universitatis hereditati, and the Acta Ecclesiastica.

    E-mail: matej.hribersek@ff.uni-lj.si

  • HAJIYEVA Khatira

    A Prosopographical Analysis of the European Union’s Special Representatives in the South Caucasus: An International Historical Perspective (2003–2026)

    This paper examines the collective biographical profile of the European Union’s Special Representatives (EUSRs) for the South Caucasus through the application of a prosopographical methodology. The primary aim of the study is to identify both the shared and distinctive characteristics of the special representatives who have played a significant role in conflict management mechanisms in the region and in securing more effective support from international actors, as well as to evaluate their effectiveness in the resolution of regional conflicts. Within the framework of the research, a specialised database was compiled on the basis of official biographies, historical archives, and media reports.

    The study analyses the profiles of prominent diplomats who have held the position of EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus since 2003, including Heikki Talvitie, Peter Semneby, Philippe Lefort, Herbert Salber, Toivo Klaar, and Magdalena Grono. For the purposes of prosopographical analysis, socio-professional characteristics –such as national background, educational training, language proficiency, previous regional experience, and career trajectories – were categorised into a set of analytical parameters. By employing digital history methods, the internal networks and interconnections among these parameters were visualised and systematically examined.

    The findings demonstrate that the personal profiles of the Special Representatives have exerted a substantial influence on shifts in the European Union’s policy towards the South Caucasus. The majority of the representatives were experienced diplomats specialising in European or post-Soviet affairs and possessing advanced proficiency in at least one foreign language. Furthermore, their prior professional careers frequently involved close cooperation with international organisations such as the OSCE and the United Nations. These institutional transitions underscore the EU’s emphasis on multilateral diplomacy in its approach to the South Caucasus. The analysis also identifies the role of such diplomacy within the EU mission in Armenia and in the management of ethnopolitical crises. A diachronic comparison reveals that, in response to geopolitical developments in the region – notably the wars of 2008 and 2020 – the profiles of the representatives evolved towards figures increasingly oriented towards crisis management and security-related tasks. This evolution makes it possible to identify the defining characteristics of the model of the “successful diplomat”.

    The research enables an interpretation of the European Union’s foreign policy not solely through official documents and formal declarations, but also through the human factor and the context of the “diplomatic elite” responsible for managing these processes. The study highlights the role of collective individual characteristics in enhancing the EU’s political engagement in the region, ensuring effective coordination of foreign policy actions, and developing a coherent strategy in the post-conflict period. Ultimately, the article offers a compelling digital example of how the prosopographical method can be successfully applied in contemporary research on political history and international relations.

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    Khatira Hajiyeva has been engaged in pedagogical activity at the Azerbaijan University of Languages since 1995. She is currently an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Caucasus Studies and History of Azerbaijan at the university. In 2004, she successfully defended her PhD thesis on “Leading Western States and NATO in Azerbaijan’s Foreign Policy”. Her current research focuses on the South Caucasus in the foreign policy of the European Union. Having conducted research in this field for nearly 20 years, she has also examined relevant archival documents at the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence, Italy. She is the author of over 60 articles and 4 books in this context. Recently, her doctoral dissertation (Dr. Hab.) titled “The South Caucasus in the Foreign Policy of the Leading Institutions of the European Union” has been submitted for defense. Furthermore, she has actively participated in numerous international conferences.

    E-mail: hajiyeva_1506@mail.ru

  • HACIOSMANOGLU Selma

    From Individuals to Networks: A Prosopographical Reconstruction of Children’s Musical Culture in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic, 1876–1946

    In the late Ottoman Empire, children’s songs emerged not merely as pedagogical

    materials but as cultural instruments through which new models of citizenship and social identity were articulated. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, educational reforms increasingly positioned music as a medium through which modern values and collective identities could be communicated to younger generations. Prior to the nineteenth century, musical expressions addressing children largely consisted of lullabies, religious hymns, and patriotic songs intended to cultivate communal values. By the late nineteenth century, children’s songs began to emerge as a distinct musical and pedagogical genre specifically designed to address the intellectual, emotional, and moral development of children.

    This study examines a curated selection of children’s songs composed between 1876 and 1946, spanning the transition from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Early Turkish Republic. The research draws upon a corpus of nearly 2,000 songs compiled from more than one hundred printed sources, including music education manuals and pedagogical publications of the period. The lyrics are analysed using Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis framework. The findings demonstrate that children’s songs functioned as instruments of cultural mediation through which political ideals, moral values, and models of modern citizenship were communicated. By examining how childhood, nationhood, and social ideals were articulated in these texts, the study highlights the role of musical repertoire in shaping cultural discourse during a transformative period in Turkish history and how this repertoire served as a sonic vehicle for modernization and nation-building.

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    Selma Haciosmanoglu is a scholar of Turkish music and cultural history. She completed her PhD with a dissertation titled Discourse Analysis of Children’s Songs from the Late Ottoman Period to the Early Republican Era (1876–1946). Her research focuses on them intersections of music, education, ideology, and cultural transformation in late Ottoman and early Republican society. She currently teaches Turkish music and works on interdisciplinary projects connecting music, cultural studies, and media production.

    E-mail: selmahaciosmanoglu@gmail.com