Overview

The World-Historical Dataverse Project is the University of Pittsburgh affiliate of a wider project to address the need for comprehensive historical data on the human experience at the global level. This project is intended to the contribute to creation of a comprehensive set of data on social-scientific, health, and environmental data for the world as a whole and for its constituent regions and localities, for the past four or five centuries. Such data, once collected, created, and standardized, will make it possible to test hypotheses about long-term and short-term social change at the global level. This type of analysis will add greatly to the validity of efforts to plan for the future.

The World-Historical Dataverse Project (WHD), housed in the World History Center, is an affiliate of the Center for Historical Information and Analysis (CHIA), and serves as the administrative center for CHIA. The WHD is governed by Director Patrick Manning and an Advisory Board consisting of Daniel Bain (Geology & Planetary Science), Hassan Karimi (School of Information Science), Patrick Manning (History), Carlos Sanchez (School of Arts & Sciences), Jackie Smith (Sociology), Wilbert van Panhuis (Public Health), and Vladimir Zadorozhny (School of Information Science).

A monthly workshop of the World-Historical Dataverse takes place on the first Tuesday of each month from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. For details on upcoming and past workshops, see the Announcements link on this website.

Current projects of the WHD include:

    • Constructing a “demo” version of a world-historical data resource, including an archive and systems for ingesting data, analysis, and visualization of data and analytical results.
    • Design and programming of a world-historical archive, based on the Dataverse Network of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University.
    • Research on interactions of variables on disease, climate, and demography for the United States, 1880 – 1980.
    • Explorations in the unification of social-science theory: identification and theorization of variables studied within anthropology, economics, history political science, and sociology.
    • Research on historical production and trade in key commodities: opium and silver.