DiPaDa: Digital Parliamentary Data in Action workshop

What can historical parliamentary records tell us about political discourse, legislative behaviour and social change? The DiPaDa: Digital Parliamentary Data in Action workshop examined this question by bringing together computational and humanistic approaches to historical parliamentary data. The workshop was organised by Dr Ajda Pretnar Žagar.

Riccardo Graziani and Jakob Vanschoonbeek analysed electoral reforms, parliamentary speech and legislative behaviour in Belgium between 1880 and 1912, showing how the introduction of plural suffrage and proportional representation affected the salience of labour and social policy topics.

Ajda Pretnar Žagar explored constituency effects in the Carniolan Provincial Assembly (1861–1913), examining how geographical context shaped parliamentary discourse. Her analysis showed how procedural parliamentary speech persisted under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while topics such as education and infrastructure were more prominent in non-central regions.

Anna Kryvenko investigated how European integration has been metaphorised in Ukrainian parliamentary discourse between 2002 and 2023, focusing on the evolving metaphor of “European integration as a journey”.

Read the workshop proceedings at this link.