Tuesday 17 March 2026 – Vincent Hiribarren (KCL)

This seminar is 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm GMT live on Zoom at https://zoom.us/j/97943434361, later posted to our YouTube channel.

Session chair: TBC

Abstract: This paper compares how a historian and AI approach the reading and analysis of archival content in 2025. The experiment focuses on a selection of documents housed at the National Archives of the United Kingdom, specifically related to the war in Cameroon during the late 1950s and early 1960s. These documents were chosen because I have previously published historical research based on their content. The primary goal is to assess the accuracy of AI in two key areas: (a) summarizing the content of digitized documents and (b) answering specific historical questions derived from these records.

Bio: I am a historian of West Africa based at King’s College London and have worked on several digitisation programmes on the African continent. I have recently created an undergraduate module on Digital History and am interested in the relationship between African Studies, Digital Humanities and AI.