Recent Talks

“New Spatial Practices,” Seminar of the Center for Environment, Geography, and Urbanism, The University of Chicago (April 28, 2023).

“The Long Land War,” Agrarian Studies Seminar, University of Georgia (March 17, 2023).

“Mapping Memory,” Matrix Seminar on Social Science, University of California, Berkeley (March 8, 2023)

“The Long Land War,” Seminar on British Studies, Stanford University (March 7, 2023).

“How Congress Talked About Environmentalism Since 1970,” Seminar for the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, Stanford University (March 6, 2023).

“The Long Land War,” Seminar on Dispossession, Law School, University of Victoria, Canada (February 16, 2023)

Keynote, “Activism,” Building the Digital Humanities Conference, University of New South Wales (November 22, 2022)

Workshop, Usable Climate Science, Yale University (November 7-8, 2022)

“The Long Land War,” Seminar on Modern European History, Princeton University (November 3, 2022).

“Text Mining Memory,” Cultural Analytics Seminar, McGill University, Montreal (September 16, 2022)

Plenary, Conference on Historical Change, Umeå, Sweden (September 4-6, 2022)

Interview, Dutch Review of Books (August 3, 2022)

“Pseudo-History and Digital History: The Dangerous Art of Text Mining,” Turing Institute, London (July 8, 2022).

“Can Humanity Change its Destiny?” Turing Institute, London (July 8, 2022).

“The Long Land War,” National Library of Ireland, Dublin (May 31, 2022).

“The Long Land War and International Governance,” Keynote, International Land Coalition, Amman, Jordan (May 24, 2022).

“The Dangerous Art of Text Mining,” History of Thought and Digital Methods Seminar, University of Pisa (May 20, 2022).

“The Long Land War,” Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (May 13, 2022).

“The Long Land War,” Seminar on Modern European History, Johns Hopkins University (April 21, 2022).

“Digital History,” Seminar on Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University (April 21, 2022).

Panel on Land Movements in Irish History, New York University (April 6, 2022).

“Revisiting the Centennial of the Peak of Britain’s Territorial Empire,” Godbey Lecture, Southern Methodist University (March 22, 2022).

“The Dangerous Art of Text Mining,” Seminar on the Digital Humanities, University of Texas (March 7, 2022).

Keynote, Title TBD, Conference on Digital History, University of Umeå, December 2021.

Title TBD, Turing Institute, December 2021.

Panelist, Seminar on Peoples’ Atlases, Georgetown University (September 21, 2021).

“The Dangerous Art of Text Mining,” Seminar on Digital Humanities, University of Indiana Urbana Champagne, May 21, 2021

“Topic Modeling Parliament’s Debates About Infrastructure,” Conference on Early Modern Mobility, Stanford University, May 14, 2021

“Digital Approaches to the Study of Infrastructure,” Conference on Early Modern Mobility, Stanford University, May 14, 2021

“The History Manifesto, Revisited?” University of Manchester, Seminar on Digital Humanities, May 13, 2021. Video here: https://studio.youtube.com/video/cMiKw386_DU/edit

Roundtable, Digital Methods in Legal History, Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt, March 1-5, 2021.

"The Dangerous Art of Text-Mining: Thinking About Monkeys, Violence, and Time in an Age of Automated Information Retrieval,” Stevanovich Institute for the Formation of Knowledge, the University of Chicago, January 8, 2021.

“A Distant Reading of Property,” Washington University, St. Louis, December 7, 2020.

Talk on Text Mining, SMU Economics, November 15, 2022.

“Jo Guldi in Conversation with Chris Kelty: The Participant in Troubled Times,” Yale Sawyer Seminar, October 29, 2020

“The Dangerous Art of Text Mining,” Keynote, Conference, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, October 4, 2020.

“The Dangerous Art of Text Mining,” Keynote, Stanford Data Practices Conference, October 2, 2020.

“Critical Search,” John Hopkins Workshop in Digital History, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, July 31, 2020.

AHA Panel: Mapping the Spaces of History, Chelsea Sheraton, NY (January 6, 2020)

"A Distant Reading of Property: Topic Models, Divergence, Collocation, and Other Text-Mining Strategies to Understand a Modern Intellectual Revolution in the Archives," Sawyer Seminar Series on Information Ecosystems, Pitt University, Pittsburgh, PA, January, 2020.

“Climate Change as a Security Question,” Community Action Federation conference on “The Era of Security,” Madrid, Spain, November 22-4, 2019.

“Participatory Mapping and the Scales of International Governance,” Yale Workshop on Usable Climate Science, November 6-8, 2019.

 “Approaches to the Measurement of Time,” Digital Humanities Workshop, University of Chicago, Oct. 4, 2019.

“Approaches to the Measurement of Time,” Keynote, Computational Text Analysis and Historical Change, Umeå, Sweden, Sep. 4, 2019.

“Measuring World View,”  Workshop on Quantitative Analysis and the Digital Turn, Fields Institute for Mathematical Studies, Toronto, Canada, March 27, 2019.

“On the Commons: Game Theory, New Theories of the Commons, and a Deep Historical Account of the Modern Commons,” Workshop on “The Role of Information in Complex Conflict,” Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, Feb 3-6, 2019.

“Frontiers of Text Mining,” Amazon Ideas Conference, Seattle, WA, Oct 16-18, 2018.

"From Critical Thinking to Critical Search: Working between microhistory and macrohistory with big data," Conference on Humanities and the Arts in the Age of Big Data, University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne, Oct. 4-5, 2018.

“International Information,” Yale Agrarian Studies Seminar, New Haven, CT, Sep. 21, 2018.

 “Locating the Subject in Time and Space: Argumentation and the Longue Durée,” Keynote, International Network for the Theory of History (INTH), Stockholm, Sweden, August 20-22, 2018.

 “Topic Modeling the History of Technology,” University of Oklahoma, April 13, 2018.

“The History of State Power in the City: Participatory, Liberal, and Neoliberal,” Workshop at Columbia University, March 3, 2018.

“Discussion of the History Manifesto,” University of Swansea, Wales, February 8, 2018.

“Computers Look at Text in 2025: What is Coming?,” The Download@Lyle Series, Southern Methodist University, February 7, 2018

“The Digital Humanities in 2025” and “An Introduction to Topic Modeling,” keynotes for the Digital Humanities Road Tour, various universities across Finland, January 27-February 3, 2018.

“The Missing Genres of Digital Argumentation in Historical Journals,” Panel on Argumentation in Digital History, American Historical Association, Washington, DC, January 6, 2018.

“Infrastructure, Society, Economics, and Culture: Lessons from the History of Large Technological Systems,” Universite de los Andes, Bogota, Columbia, December 5-6, 2017.

“Participation and Democracy,” Old Red Museum (Dallas, Texas), October 27, 2017.

“Topic Modeling,” Talk at the Fondren Library Prism Panel, Southern Methodist University, October 23, 2017.

Talk, “Argumentation in Digital History,” George Mason University, September 15-6, 2017.

Plenary Talk, “Fastlanes and Potholes on the Road to the Future of Digital History,” Aalto University, Helsinki, June 2, 2017.

Keynote, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Infrastructure History, NYU Paris, May 30, 2017.

“Comings and Goings,” Honors Convocation Plenary Keynote, Southern Methodist University, April 17, 2017.

Keynote, Stanford Literary Lab workshop, “Findings. Is computation changing the study of history and literature?” April 14, 2017

“Infrastructure in the Longue Duree,” Plenary Presentation, AAG Premeeting on Infrastructure, Boston, April 4, 2017.

 “The Paper War of Land Reform,” Legal History Series, Boston University, March 2, 2017.

“The Longue Duree of Land, the Longue Duree of Land Reform: Towards a Utopian History,” talk at Uppsala University, November 21-22, 2016.

“Methods Intensive: Towards a Method of Textmining for Historical Analysis,” Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, November 17-8, 2016.

"On the Interpretation of History by Squiggle: Visualizing Change Beyond the N-Gram," introductory talk at workshop,  "From Quantitative to Qualitative Analysis: New Perspectives on Historical Research in Political Economy," University of Chicago, October 14, 2016.

“Goldwin Smith and the Longue Duree of Reparations,” keynote panel, "The Public Work of Interpretation," MLA, January 9, 2016, https://apps.mla.org/program_details?prog_id=651A&year=2016

“The Long Land War,” presentation at the Hoover Institute, Stanford, June 24, 2015.

“Digital Workshop on Paper Machines,” Mellon Seminar, The University of California, Davis, May 14, 2015.

“Seminar on the Long Land War,” Mellon Seminar, The University of California, Davis, May 13, 2015.

“New Work in History, Examining the Longue Durée with Paper Machines” at the University of Chicago, Disciplines & Technologies conference, May 8, 2015.

“Participatory Maps, a History,” Land Fictions Conference, Rutgers, NJ, May 1, 2015.

“The History Manifesto,” participation in dedicated roundtable hosted by the Washington History Seminar, Co-sponsored by the AHA, April 20, 2015.

 “The Long Land War,” presentation at the workshop on History, Culture, and Society, Harvard University, April 3, 2015.

Presentation, “Introducing Paper Machines,” Princeton University workshop on Digital History, March 27, 2015.

 “Sewers, Water, & Air,” Gilded Ages workshop, Brown University, February 26, 2015.

“The History Manifesto,” Annenberg Seminar, University of Pennsylvania, February 17, 2015.

“The History Manifesto,” presentation at the Kennedy School, comments by Sam Moyn, Harvard University, February 12, 2015.

“Paper Machines,” MIT World History Seminar, Cambridge, MA, January 13, 2015.

“Participatory Maps, A Global History,” Brown India Initiative, December 5, 2014.

“The Apocalyptic Anthropocene,” New England Critical Environmental Social Science Workshop, Brown University, November 21, 2014.

 “A Roundtable on The History Manifesto: The Role of History and the Humanities in a Digital Age,” presentation at the Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, November 17, 2014.

“History Looks at the Evidence,” talk at the British Library, October 9, 2014.

 “The History Manifesto,” talk in the British Government series, London School of Economics, October 8, 2014.

“Introducing Paper Machines,” talk at the Institute of Historical Research, Digital Humanities Seminar, October 7, 2014.

“The History Manifesto,” talk at the History Department, University of California, Berkeley, September 29, 2014.

“Are Crowdsourced Maps the Future of Community Self-Governance? Food, Land, and Water,” talk at the Stanford Center for Liberation Technology, January 9, 2014. Video available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9HHWEpAVFU

 “The History of Participatory Mapping,” talk at Stanford History Department, October 24, 2013.

“Introducing Paper Machines,” talk at the Stanford History Department, October 24, 2013.

“Property Rights, the Post Office, and the Making of the Infrastructure State,” A Symposium on the History, Theory and Culture of Roads, University College Cork, Ireland, May 3, 2013.

“Human Infrastructure: Participatory Mapping in Chicago,” Conference on the Built Environment, University of Chicago, April 26, 2013. Video online at: http://techtv.mit.edu/embeds/23839?size=custom&custom_width=1000

“The Return of the Longue Durée,” Yale Legal History Forum, Yale Law School, April 23, 2013.

“How Digital Tools are Changing the Practice of History: A Report on the Longue Durée,” invited lecture, National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, DC, April 19, 2013.

“Human Infrastructure,” Infrastructure Monument Conference, MIT, April 8, 2013.

Roundtable on digital history, Harvard History Department, March 2013.

“"Infrastructure for a revolution,” Media Places Conference, Umea University, Sweden, January 2013. http://mediaplaces2012.humlab.umu.se/program.html, http://storify.com/search?q=guldi+%40mediaplaces2012

"Digital Methods and the Long Land War," University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 4 December 2012, http://digihist.se/2012/12/13/jo-guldi-om-digital-historia/

Seminar, "Mapping Time, Mapping Space," University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 4 December 2012, http://storify.com/digihist/jo-guldi-in-gothenburg

“"The Long Land War: A Global History of Land Reform, c. 1860-Present" Harvard International & Global History Seminar, Harvard University November 28, 2012

Paper Machines Seminar, Rice University, Houston, November 19, 2012. http://digitalhistory.blogs.rice.edu/2012/11/17/paper-machines-debriefing, http://johngmarks.com/2012/11/19/paper-machines/

“International Finance and the Rise of Global Squatterdom,” Histories of Land, Economy, and Power Conference and Workshop, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~histecon/ehppf/land/program.html Harvard University, November 10, 2012

“Introducing the Digital Humanities: New Research Methods for Graduate Students,” Northwestern University, June 2012. Video available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl7rumSNPw8

Topic Modeling Workshop, MITH, University of Maryland, College Park, November 3, 2012 http://vimeo.com/53078693

"Britain Invents the Infrastructure State," Harvard STS Circle, February 2011.

“A History of the Boundary Line,” in artists’ panel, “Natural Histories of the Boundary Line,” to accompany film work by Sarah Kanouse and Thomas Comerford, Mess Hall, Chicago, January 2011.

“Infrastructure and Social Connection,” Social Computing Seminar, New York (January 2011).

"Keywords for the Infrastructure State," Early Modern Reading Group, November 2010

"Mapping the Spaces of Subaltern History," DHCS Conference, Northwestern, November 2010

"The City Made of Words: Mapping the Spaces of Subaltern History," University of Virginia Library, September 2010

“The Invisibility of Scotland,” Mellon Conference on the Social Sciences, University of Chicago (March 2009).

Various talks to graduate students on digital methods, University of Chicago, 2008-11

 “Technology, State, and Society in the Building of the British Road Network, 1810-1850,” Technology, Politics, & Culture Seminar, the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois (April 4, 2008).

Other Papers Read

“Welcome: Interdisciplinary Institutes in a Longue-Durée Perspective,” Think-Play-Hack, SMU-Taos, New Mexico, July 2019.

“World View in a Longue-Durée Perspective,” Think-Play-Hack, SMU-Taos, New Mexico, July 2019.

 “Front Lines: Early-Career Scholars Doing Digital History,” American Historical Association, January 4, 2013, http://aha.confex.com/aha/2013/webprogram/Session8898.html, http://storify.com/JohnOKDC/aha-2013-session-111-front-lines-early-career-scho

“Mapping the Spaces of Subaltern History," Society for Textual Scholarship, Penn State, March 2011.

 “Learning Not to Speak to Strangers,” Anglo-American Conference, Institute for Historical Research, London (July 2-3, 2009).

“Landscape History and Modern History” to the Social History Workshop in the Department of History at the University of Chicago (April 2009)

 “Citizenship and Connectivity: How Government Pioneered the Shape of Public Space in Modern Britain, 1803-1811”  Panel on Landscape, North American Conference on British Studies, Cincinnati, Ohio (October 2008).

“The Road to Rule: Technology, the State, and Britain’s interkingdom highways, 1740-1850,” in panel, Pathbreaking in the Nineteenth Century: Roads as a product of statecraft and representation, The American Society for Environmental History, Boise, Idaho (March 12-16, 2008).

 “The Fellowship of Travelers:  Migrant Communities on Britain’s Roads, 1740-1850,” California World History Association, Fullerton, California (November 11-12, 2007).

 “Scottish Technocrats, the Highway Commission, and Postcolonial Nationalism: The Administrative origins of the Transport Revolution, 1810-1840,” Western Conference on British Studies, Albuquerque, New Mexico (November 1-3, 2007)

“The Transport Revolution, Reimagined:  Visual technology, governmentality, and mobility on Britain’s Roads, 1740-1850,” Fifth Annual Conference of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic & Mobility, Helmond, the Netherlands (October 25-28, 2007)

“Paving the Way to Nationhood: Parliament and the British Interkingdom Highway System,” Midwest Conference on British Studies at Wright State University , Dayton, Ohio (October 28, 2007).

“Learning Not to Talk to Strangers: Interactions in London’s Public Streets, 1810-1840” Rocky Mountain Interdisciplinary History Conference (RMIHC), Boulder, Colorado (September 7-8, 2007).