Emotional Imprints of War: A Computer-Assisted Analysis of Emotions in Dutch Parliamentary Debates, 1945-1989

Historical research can be enhanced by methods and resources from various disciplines, ranging from psychology to computer linguistics. With a creative and innovative perspective on »things we think we know«, Milan van Lange presents a computer-assisted historical investigation into the role of emotions in dealing with consequences of World War II in the Netherlands. By »emotion mining« digitised sources, van Lange shows where emotions were present and how they were expressed and discussed in the political engagement with people who experienced long-term effects of the war, such as former collaborators and war criminals, the resistance, and war victims.

Milan van Lange, born in 1992, works as a researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. He studied history at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen and did his doctorate at the NIOD and Utrecht University (2016-2021). His research interests are at the intersection of contemporary and social history, war studies, digital humanities, digitisation of historical archives, and innovation in research methodology, including the integration of computational methods, text mining, data analysis, and statistics in historical research.