How might we use digital methods to bring different archival sources into relationship with each other, and use them to better understand how people lived in and moved around cities in the medieval and renaissance periods? Is it possible to map sound or emotion the way that we can map demographic or social realities? The DECIMA project is an ongoing collaboratory effort based at the University of Toronto but with partners in the US, England, Italy, and Australia, who are aiming to see whether- and how- this might be possible.

Nicholas Terpstra is Professor and Chair of History at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where he teaches Renaissance and early modern social history. His recent book, Cultures of Charity: Women, Politics, and the Reform of Poor Relief in Ranaissance Italy, won the Gordon Book Prize of the Renaissance Society of America.