Project H: Syntheses: Online Encyclopedia (Compendium heroicum)

Principal Investigators:
Prof. Dr. Anna Schreurs-Morét, Prof. Dr. Ralf von den Hoff

Research associate: 
Dr. Georg Feitscher

Involved discipline:
digital humanities

Project H was established in the second funding period of the SFB. Since 2018, it has been publishing an online encyclopedia called Compendium heroicum, which condenses the SFB’s research results into lexical entries and is accessible according to the principles of Open Access. By 2024, H will complete Compendium heroicum, which is an integral part of the third funding period’s overall focus on synthesis.

The project is pursuing two complementary tasks. Firstly, the editorial content and technical features of Compendium heroicum will be further developed and finalized. H will continue its close partnership with the “Open Encyclopedia System” (OES) at the Free University of Berlin and, with them, will continue to develop and optimize Compendium heroicum. Additionally, the encyclopedia’s scope and visibility will be enhanced, its engagement in ongoing academic debates will be increased, and the encyclopedia will become a long-term reference work for the SFB’s academic output. To achieve this, all entries will be published in German and English. Compendium heroicum will also be integrated into Project INF’s sustainability concept for the presentation, accessibility and continued use of the SFB’s results.

The second field of activity concerns the intensification and systematic development of lexical syntheses, which are published in Compendium heroicum and form a foundation for research at the SFB. The encyclopedia promotes the exchange of knowledge between the individual research groups at the SFB, and ensures a collaborative and coordinated output of results. Due to the fact that the SFB is in its concluding stage, H is prioritizing the overarching phenomena of the heroic over the analysis and exploration of individual phenomena.

Additionally, H will also take up the research foci of S1 to S4. Together with H, the S project groups will form a collaborative working group (VAG H). In plenary meetings held every six months, VAG H will discuss and test their central concepts and fundamental terms. The results of this collective synthesis, which is defined by the cross-sectional topics identified by the SFB, are supplemented by the work of H and published in articles in Compendium heroicum.