Parish Data

Twenty-Fourth Warwick Symposium on Parish Research
Saturday 16 May 2026 - CALL FOR REGISTRATIONS NOW OPEN TO 8 MAY
University of Warwick, Faculty of Arts Building, FAB 5.03 (hybrid, campus map)

Co-Hosted by Beat Kümin (Warwick History / My-Parish) and Marek Słoń (Institute for the
Historical Geography of the Church in Poland - John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin)
with Jeanne Dufresne, Lynn Marriott & Dan Meldon (Warwick) & Artur Karpacz (Lublin)

 

The tax register of the Poznań diocese from 1561, digital edition: faksimile indexed with INDXR App and NODEGOAT App,
with data on the relationships of people, places and institutions mentioned in the source.

 

Parishes belonged to one of the most developed territorial networks in medieval and modern Europe. They are documented in a range of important sources, some generated within the communities (registers of baptisms, marriages and burials; fabric / poor relief accounts; inventories), others by ecclesiastical bodies (visitation / court records; benefice registers) and secular authorities (for numerous administrative / taxation purposes). Throughout the Continent, furthermore, church buildings were filled with material culture, some of which survives. Taken together, this rich set of evidence has the potential to yield huge amounts of data on individuals, groups / institutions, socio-economic conditions, religious life, spatial organization and cultural change. Traditional source critique, machine learning applications, visualization techniques, geostatistical analyses and Digital Humanities opportunities, to name but a few, can all be used – and perhaps combined – to enhance our understanding of both parish affairs and their wider repercussions. This brings new research possibilities as well as numerous challenges, not only technologically but also methodologically and even philosophically. The 2026 Symposium seeks to illustrate and reflect on these themes within broadly conceived chronological, regional and disciplinary frameworks.
 

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME (SUBJECT TO CHANGES)

 
10.00 - Registrations & Coffee

10.15 - Welcome & Introduction

10.30-12.00 - Session 1: Late Medieval Approaches (chair: Beat Kümin)

Anna Pazourková (Charles University Prague & Czech Academy of Sciences):
Database of pre-Hussite Territorial Church Administration in Bohemia: Sources, Structure, and Research Potential

Nicholas Ringwood (Waipapa Taumata Rau | the University of Auckland):
Quantifying Misconduct: Data‐Based Approaches to Recidivism in Late Medieval Church Court Proceedings

Beatrix F. Romhányi (Károli Gáspár University):
Parishes as Data Infrastructure: Reconstructing the Late Medieval Parish Network of the Kingdom of Hungary

Raphael Walker (University of Bern):
Digital Prosopography in the Late Medieval Diocese of Basel: The lower Clergy of the Deaneries of Sisgau and Frickgau from 1460 to 1490

 
12.15-13.00 - Session 2: Community Perspectives (chairs: Jeanne Dufresne & Daniel Meldon)

Robert Swanson (University of Birmingham):
Small Data for Small Worlds: Recording the Medieval English Parish

Felicita Tramontana (Roma Tre University):
Data-Driven Insights from the Sacramental Records of Seventeenth-Century Bethlehem

 
13.00-14.00 - Lunch

 
14.00/15.30 - Session 3: Central European Data (chair: Marek Słoń)

Arkadiusz Borek (Polish Academy of Sciences):
The Visibility of Parish Churches in Local Consistory Court Records in Poland: A Case Study of the Kalisz Consistory

Arthur Karpacz (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin):
What to Do with All That Data? Opportunities and Challenges in Modelling Early Modern Clergy Biographies in Lesser Poland with Linked Open Data

Konrad Kołodziejczyk (Polish Academy of Sciences):
Methodological Foundations and Structure of a Database of Church Servants in the Diocese of Krakow (16th–18th Centuries)

Béla Vilmos Mihalik (Eötvös Loránd University):
Confessional Demographic Model? Parish Records, Historical Demography, and Recatholisation in Eighteenth-Century Hungary

 
15.30/16.00 - Tea

 
16.00/17.30 - Session 4: Big Data Processing (chairs: Arthur Karpacz & Lynn Marriott)

Maik Schmerbauch (Federal archivist):
Processing the Ecclesiastical Records of Parishes and Communities: Working with SQL and Python

Marek Słoń (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin):
History Without Stories? Risk and Advantages of Big Parish Data

Andrew Wareham (University of Roehampton):
Women’s Voices from the Seventeenth Century. Hearth Tax Digital - Chester and Hertfordshire 1662-1664

 
17.30/18.00 - General Discussion & Outlook
 

CALL FOR REGISTRATIONS (CLOSING FRIDAY 8 MAY 2026)

 

To take part, book a place using the appropriate route below, noting that all participants (including speakers and co-organizers) have to register in advance by 8 May. Please be aware that some presenters will address the meeting remotely & note that all participants (with the exception of pre-approved bursary holders) have to meet their own travel / accommodation expenses:
 

 
The Symposium has always been an inclusive forum of exchange between anyone with related research interests from whatever background or career stage. For further information contact b.kumin@warwick.ac.uk and marek.slon@kul.pl

Any further programme details and practical guidance will be published on this Symposium homepage with the url:

http://go.warwick.ac.uk/my-parish/parishsymposia/data/

!! CALL FOR REGISTRATION FLYER (vertical / horizontal) - PLEASE DISPLAY !!

'Call for Papers' flyer (now closed)

Symposium report - coming soon after the event