Visualizing Longitudinal Data. Rooted Cosmopolitans in the Low Countries, 1850-1914.

In this article we describe the overall structure of our Virtual Research Environment ‘TIC Collaborative’, designed for the study of nineteenth and early twentieth century international congresses and organizations related to social and cultural reform issues. The VRE consists of a digital text platform, which includes documents related to the congresses, organizations and their members, and a relational database in which we gather biographical information about people who played a role in this transnational arena. Both elements are geared towards interactive use and ‘scholarly crowdsourcing’. In order to demonstrate the potential of our VRE we present one case study in which we use longitudinal data visualisations to develop targeted research questions about congress participation and transfer of knowledge.