»Research Navigator« has been conceptualized by the History Department and the Institute for European Global Studies. The three years pilot project is led by the History Department and the Institute for European Global Studies. It is an initiative by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in cooperation with the Digital Humanities Lab.

The »Research Navigator« attempts to give a new and innovative impulse both to research as well as research-based projects in the humanities and social sciences. It aims at developing new research strategies and questions through the employment of new communication technology. With special regard to the humanities and social sciences, »Research Navigator« envisages to make material, data and sources, thus far available to the IT-research environment only, available and accessible to a broader group by using typical IT-based tools and methods.

The corresponding research architecture specifies and allows for a trans-disciplinary cooperation by involving students, doctoral students and post-docs of both disciplinary fields into the project. This involvement enables them to familiarize with the new methods and prevents academic research to be based only on the secondary use of algorithm-filtered data.

In cooperation with the Digital Humanities Lab, the »Research Navigator« is an initiative of the History Department (Prof. Dr. Susanna Burghartz, Prof. Dr. Martin Lengwiler) and the Institute for European Global Studies in Basel (Prof. Dr. Madeleine Herren-Oesch). The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Basel supports this pilot project for three years.