Dr. Malte Rehbein

Lecturer and Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Lehrstuhl für Computerphilologie
Universität Würzburg

My research interests cover all aspects of the Humanities Computing, particularly to support the study of history ("digital history"). Among other activities in this field, I am currently working on a methodology for encoding and processing complex texts, on textual variation and on scholarly digital editions.

Projects & Activities

Teaching Digital Humanities
In winter 2009/2010 the new BA course in "Digital Humanities" has started at the University of Würzburg with more than 50 students. I am teaching seminars in textencoding, data modelling in the Humanities and an introduction to digital editing. Further information can be found on our institute's website.
Digital Medievalist
The Digital Medievalist is an international web-based Community of Practice for medievalists working with digital media. I am member of the Board of Executives and Editor-In-Chief for the journal.
Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
I am currently co-chairing the Special Interest Group on Manuscripts of the TEI. The goal of this SIG is to bring together users of the Text Encoding Initiative who wish to improve the encoding strategies for marking up transcriptions and editions of manuscript materials.
Codicology and Palaeography in the digital age
This is an anthology, I have edited together with the colleagues from the IDE.
Genetic Encoding
The work on kundige bok showed somehow the limits of XML / TEI for encoding textual variants. In this project, we try to find out, if, when and how texts can be marked-up for the creation of genetic editions. The discussion is based on the TEI-guidelines. Progress is published via the SIG Manuscripts. The "Genetic Editions in a Digital Framework" workshop in Paris was a good success.
The Plücker letters
This project deals with letters from the WWII front as well as with tape recorded interviews with contemporary witnesses from the 1960s. It aims at creating a digital edition, combining written and oral tradition.
Kundige Bok
This is a 15th century manuscript, I have recently finished working on with the purpose of creating a digital edition. The text is dealing with regulations for everyday life ("Burspraken") in North German Göttingen. The text was revised almost annually, producing a large number of deletions, additions, transpositions and comments. The idea of the project is to fully exploit the features of information technology in order to interact with the user and create a dynamic output. See here for a brief description of the project.
TEXTE programme
In TEXTE, I supported my colleagues creating editions of the correspondence of the Irish Painter James Barry (1741-1806), of Irish songbooks originating from the 19th century, of the Dublin Penny Journal (19th century) and of the work of Irish poet and songwriter Thomas Moore (1779-1852).
Hyperspectral Imaging
This is a research initiative that emphasises the "computing"-aspect of Humanities Computing. In An Foras Feasa at NUI Maynooth we work with a hyperspectral scanner towards various research problems in the Humanities. My own project aims at classification and ideally dating of inks in manuscripts.

Work experience: some!

Currently: Würzburg University
Lecturer and Research Fellow
2007-2009: National University of Ireland, Galway
Marie Curie Research Fellow and member of the famous research programme TEXTE (Transfer of Expertise in Technologies of Editing).
2004-2007: Siemens, Berlin
Senior Management Consultant. Mainly for Public Sector customers, i.e. administration and government in Germany and abroad. Main interests: Mega Cities, Electronic Government, Records Management, Digital Archives.
2001-2004: debis / T-Systems, Berlin
Consultant and project manager. Mainly for local authorities in Germany. Concept and development of tools for the optimisation of administrative processes. A fight against windmills...
2000-2001: Bundesdruckerei, Berlin
Software developer. Development of web based retrieval services for professional patent information.
1996-1999: Max Planck Institute for History, Göttingen
Student researcher in the Historical Information Sciences (Prof. Dr. Manfred Thaller). Member of the Duderstadt digitisation project. Thoughts and prototypes for dynamic digital texteditions.

Education: yes!

PhD in history from the University of Göttinge (June 2009). Doctoral thesis (December 2008) in history ("Göttinger Burspraken im 15. Jahrhundert - Entstehung, Entwicklung, Edition"). It aims at using XML / TEI technology for creating a critical, electronic, web based edition of a multi-layered medieval text. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Petke and Prof. Dr. Hedwig Röckelein.

I have an M.A. in both, history and mathematics, from the University of Göttingen (2000). My master dissertation "Das olde kundige bok in spätmittelalterlichem Gebrauch" is - to a certain extent - an archetype for my PhD thesis.

I also did some business administration at Fernuniversität Hagen.

Publications

Books
Göttinger Statuten im 15. Jahrhundert. Entstehung - Entwicklung - Edition. Göttingen: SUB 2010. Download pdf.
Digital Resources
Kundige bok 2 (digital edition). Hosted by the municipal archives of Göttingen.
As editor
Kodikologie und Paläographie im digitalen Zeitalter, ed. Malte Rehbein, Patrick Sahle, and Torsten Schaßan (=Schriftenreihe des IDE Band 2), Norderstedt 2009.
Jahrbuch für Computerphilologie 10, ed. Malte Rehbein and Sean Ryder, Paderborn 2010. Online version: http://computerphilologie.tu-darmstadt.de/ejournal.html
Research articles
Escaping Flatland: Multi-Dimensionality in Medieval Texts, in: Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum 5 (2011). Accepted for publication.
The TEI@Galway - Towards A Digital Scholarly Community in Ireland, in: Jahrbuch für Computerphilologie 10, 2010, 7-10 (with Sean Ryder). Online version.
Vom Nutzen digitaler Editionen - das Göttinger kundige bok, in: Bibliothek und Wissenschaft 42, 2009, 7-28.
The Ghost in the Manuscript. Hyperspectral Text Recovery and Segmentation, in: Kodikologie und Paläographie im digitalen Zeitalter, Norderstedt 2009, 159-174 (with Patrick Shiel and John Keating).
The transition from classical to digital thinking. Reflections on Tim McLoughlin, James Barry and collaborative work, in: Jahrbuch für Computerphilologie 10, 2010, 55-69 Download pdf here.
Reconstructing the Textual Evolution of a Medieval Manuscript, in: Literary & Linguistic Computing, 2009 24, 319-327.
Multi-level variation, in: Digital Humanities 2009, ed. MITH, 2009, S. 11-12. Download pdf.
Digital edition of late medieval town statutes: Visualising the evolution of text and law, in: New Technologies in Humanities Research, ed. Ülle Must and Marcus Denton, Tallinn 2008, 72-76.
Towards a model for dynamic text editions, in: Digital Humanities 2008, ed. Lisa Lena Opa-Hänninen et al, Oulu, 2008, S. 78-81 (mit Dino Buzzetti). Download pdf.
Developments in electronic government and records management, Tallinn 2005.
From Digital Archive to Digital Edition, in: Historical Social Research 24 (1999), 101-145 (with Manfred Thaller et al.).
Das 'olde kundige bok' in spätmittelalterlichem Gebrauch, Master thesis, Universität Göttingen, 1999.
Textual Fluidity and Digital Editions, in: Text Variety in the Witnesses of Medieval Texts, ed. Milena Dobreva, Sofia 1998, 14-39 (with Dino Buzzetti). Download pdf.
Dynamische digitale Textedition: Konzept und Umsetzung, in: Netzinfrastrukturen und Anwendungen für die Informationsgesellschaft, ed. Dieter Pötschke and Mathias Weber, Berlin 1998, 541-545.
Editionen als Softwareproblem. Die 'dynamische Textedition', in: Concilium medii aevi 1, 1998. Download pdf here.
Book reviews
Wernfried Hofmeister / Andrea Hofmeister-Winter (ed.): Wege zum Text, Tübingen 2009. In: Sehepunkte 10 (2010), 7/8.
Arianna Ciula / Francesco Stella (ed.): Digital Philology and Medieval Texts, Pisa 2007. In: Digital Medievalist 5 (2009) (with Franz Fischer).

Presentations: quite regular!

"Textvarianz und digitale Edition": Editionswissenschaftliches Kolloquium an der Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität, München (June 2010)
"Overcoming the Complexity of Textual Variation: A Case-Study and Some Cross-disciplinary Ideas": Workshop on historical texts, Medford (January 2010)
"Representation of a Living Text - the Digital Edition of a Medieval Law Book": Philtag 8, Würzburg (October 2009)
"Law, time and space - A three-dimensional approach to medieval dress codes": International Medieval Congress 2009, Leeds, UK (July 2009)
"Textual Genetics" (with Dino Buzzetti): ACUME2 workshop, Rimini, Italien (July 2009)
"Multilevel Variation": Digital Humanities 09, College Park, USA (June 2009)
"The Ghost in the Manuscript" (with John Keating and Patrick Shiel): Digital Humanities 09, College Park, USA (June 2009)
Can we really benefit from electronic texts?": International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, USA (May 2009)
Teaching module "Digital Editing - Encoding Manuscripts and Other Handwritten Materials" (with Dot Porter): Digital Humanities Observatory Spring School, Galway, Ireland (April 2009)
"Expressing Uncertainty": STS 2009 International Conference, Society for Textual Scholarship, New York, USA (March 2009)
"Encoding Genetics" (with Justin Tonra): TEI Consortium member's meeting, King's College, London, UK (2008)
"Towards A Model for Dynamic Editions" (with Dino Buzzetti): Digital Humanities, Oulu, Finland (2008)
Department of Philosophy, University of Bologna, Italy (2008)
Text Editing Masterclass, Maynooth, Ireland (2008)
Themen & Tendenzen der Mittelalterforschung, Universität Göttingen, Germany (2007)
Meeting of the Humanities Serving Irish Society (HSIS) consortium, Galway, Ireland (2007)
TEI Consortium members' meeting, University of Maryland, College Park, USA (2007)
HERA conference, Tallinn, Estonia (2007)
Historische Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen, Hannover, Germany (2007)
Forschungskolloquium Korpuslinguistik, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Germany (2006)
Diplomatischer Apparat der Universität Göttingen, Germany (1999, 2004, 2006, 2007)
Several presentations about electronic government, workflow, digital archiving and records management (2001-2006)
University of Bergen, Norway (1998)
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München, Germany (1998)
Info'98, Potsdam, Germany (1998)
Deutscher Historikertag, Frankfurt / Main, Germany (1998)
Max Planck Institute for History, Göttingen, Germany (1997)
The Modern document: Digital Archives for Mass-Sources from the Holocaust, paper given at the XI International Association for History and Computing (AHC) Conference, Moscow, Russia (1996)

Hobbies: please join!

My most welcome (and needed) compensation for my mainly desk-based job is motion and outdoor activities and the combination of both. I have been doing competitive orienteering for most of my life, I enjoy (cross-country) running, cycling, hiking, swimming, volleyball, skiing and climbing. I like travelling and exploring the world! The more home-based activities include reading, playing games, listening to music or being not active at all...

Contact: welcome!

Malte Rehbein
Lehrstuhl für Computerphilologie
Universität Würzburg
Am Hubland, Phil. 8/E/14
97074 Würzburg, Germany
E-Mail: malte (dot) rehbein (at) uni-wuerzburg (dot) de