Designing Multilingual Digital Pedagogy Initiatives: 

The Programming Historian for English, Spanish, and French speaking DH 

Communities

Sofia Papastamkou (sofia.papastamkou@univ-lille.fr)1, Antonio Rojas Castro (antonio.rojas-castro@bbaw.de)2, 

Anna-Maria Sichani (a.sichani@sussex.ac.uk)3

1IRHiS, CNRS/University of Lille, 2BBAW, 3University of Sussex

About the project
The Programming Historian is a community-led pedagogy 
initiative launched in 2008 for Humanities scholars that 
aims to publish open-access peer-reviewed tutorials in 
English, Spanish and French on a wide range of digital 
tools, techniques, and workflows. 

It is now a proudly multilingual open access journal 
involving a large team of editors, authors, translators and 
reviewers, that requires software development, conducts 
community surveys and solicits community input. 

Increasing Access
The Programming Historian aims to publish accessible 
tutorials targeted for a global audience. For that reason, 
authors are encouraged to address technological, linguistic 
and cultural barriers: 

● methods & tools should be accessible to international 
audiences and reproducible in languages other than the 
original (e.g. multilingual documentation, different 
character sets for text analysis tools...);

● primary sources and alternative datasets from outside 
their geographical expertise can be suggested for readers 
to explore; 

● specific cultural references, idiomatic expressions, or 
tones might not register for all audiences;

● historical persons, organizations, or events specific to a 
particular culture shall be clarified and explained in detail;

● examples of code and metadata shall use internationally 
recognized standards for date and time formats. 

2008 2012 2016 2017 
2018 2019 

Three editions 
Open access is not only about copyright issues and 
internet connection! Language also shapes access to 
information on the internet.

By translating and publishing original tutorials in Spanish 
and French, The Programming Historian aims to make 
open educational resources accessible for a diverse 
community of scholars:

● English edition contains 80 original tutorials;
● Spanish edition contains 44 tutorials (42 translated 

tutorials and 2 original tutorials);
● French edition contains 2 translated tutorials.

All our tutorials including translations are peer-reviewed 
by experts! 

Bibliography 
● Crymble, A., ‘Identifying and Removing Gender Barriers in Open Learning Communities: The Programming Historian’ in: 

Blended Learning In Practice (Autumn, 2016), 49–60.
● Gibbs, F., ‘Editorial Sustainability and Open Peer Review at Programming Historian’, DH Commons, Vol. 1 (2015).
● Smith, M. S., ‘Opening Education’, Science, 323(2), 89-93 (2009).
● Sichani, A.-M., Baker, J., Afanador Llach, M. J., Walsh, B., ‘Diversity and Inclusion in Digital Scholarship and Pedagogy: The 

Case of The Programming Historian’, Insights, (2019).

Follow us / join us / Síguenos / 
Únete / Suivez-nous / Rejoignez-
nous

programminghistorian.org

@proghist

Internationalisation strategy 
● Open access | Open peer review | Open ethos
● Full language initiatives 
● Contact zone: writing for a global audience
● Inclusivity: gender-inclusive writing
● Ad hoc translations
● Neutral political policy