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‘The past is hard to predict’ is a common joke amongst historians: as long as an interpretation of the past is based on facts, it is legitimate. Still, replicability should be as important in history as in any other science, which, as it turns out, is not always the case. Dr Pim Huijnen (History and Art History) and Dr Pieter Huistra (History and Art History) talk about their research project on replicating historical research on the podcast .

Replication in the field of history

In their research project Once more with feeling, Huijnen and Huistra explore what replication is like in the field of history, and what it can teach us about the historical research cycle. Understanding replication in history is, according to both researchers very relevant, and potentially even more so in the future. “It’s interesting to learn how replication would work in history, whether history as it’s been done now is replicable, and what it even means for history to be replicable,” says Huijnen.

What historians specifically do

Right now, “six very bright rMA students are helping us with this research by trying to dissect various articles step by step and try to find out what the authors actually did,” explains Huistra. This is, according to him, not an easy feat to accomplish, “because it’s not always clear what historians specifically do.” Once the students find out what the original author did, they try to do the same thing and see what happens. “It should be clear and open what you’re doing and how you got to your results,” says Huistra. The research so far seems to point out that this is not always the case in historical research at the moment. “I think that in history, we’re just not so well developed yet in explaining what we’re doing,” states Huistra.