Prosopography Research

2013 Workshop / Monday 29 July, 2013

In this talk, Katharine Keats-Rohan provides an introduction to and overview of the prosopographical method. Drawing on material from her extremely useful online portal Prosopography Research, Katharine sets out the subtle yet important differences between prosopography, biography, and (now) social network analysis; introduces some of the challenges and creative tensions of the discipline (in particular finding the right balance between ‘splitting’ and ‘lumping’ prosopoghical categories); introduces some other key resources for the field, including DynCoopNet, Prosop, Berkeley Prosopographical Services, and Who were the Nuns?; and concludes with some salutary warnings about seductive yet largely unintelligible network visualizations of prosopographical data.