The Department of Historical Information Science of the History Faculty of Moscow State University is 20 years old: New trends in interdisciplinary research

The article is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Department of Historical Information Science of the History Faculty of Moscow State University. It provides a brief analysis of the areas of scientific work of the Department during the second decade of its existence; thus, new trends in the development of Historical Information Science are also traced – an interdisciplinary area of contemporary historical studies which dates back to the early 1990s. The origins of this area are associated with the activities of the group on the application of mathematical methods and computers in historical research, formed in the 1970s at the Department of Source Studies by its director, Academician I.D. Kovalchenko. On his initiative, in 1991 the group became the departmental laboratory of historical information science, which in 2001 received the status of a general faculty laboratory, and in 2004 was transformed into the Department of the same name. The article notes that in the 2010s the "Renaissance of quantification" took place, mainly due to the growing interest in big data technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning, artificial neural networks, etc. In this regard, Data Science, which is considered a section of computer science related to the processing, analysis and presentation of data in digital formats, is acquiring an important role. The scientific work of the department is largely implemented in the course of research projects supported by Russian scientific funds. The article provides a brief description of these projects carried out at the department in 2014-2024. It is noted that their main goal is to increase knowledge in a particular areas of historical studies (mainly in the economic and social history of Russia), as well as in the tasks of studying and preserving (digital) historical and cultural heritage.

Lomonosov Moscow University, historical information science, Department of historical information science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, Data analytics, quantification, cultural heritage, research projects