I’m Fred Gibbs, assistant professor in the History and Art History Department at George Mason University and Director of Digital Scholarship at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.

My ‘traditional’ research interests lie in the confluence of medicine and natural philosophy in the medieval and early modern periods. I am currently finishing a manuscript on the nature of poison as discussed in medical literature from 1200-1600, especially poison’s relationship to disease, and the related notions of plague, contagion, panaceas, and putrefaction; it’s based on my UW-Madison dissertation. My work has been supported by numerous research grants and fellowships, including those from the National Science Foundation, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy.

At RR-CHNM, i develop and execute various research projects that promote historical scholarship with new digital research methodologies. Current projects include mapping botanical expeditions at the turn of the 20th century, text mining the Old Bailey archive (read more…), and developing new techniques for understanding Victorian history through thousands of books. Most of these grapple with the theoretical and practical challenges of using large datasets for historical research. Luckily, RR-CHNM is a tremendously collaborative atmosphere, and we all work on a little bit of everything.

I teach courses on the digital humanities and on various topics in the history of science, medicine, and technology.

I completed my History of Science PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009, under the patient and insightful direction of Mike Shank, Tom Broman, Walt Schalick, Florence Hsia, and John Scarborough. Before that, i programmed in a cubicle (where i also built elaborate soda-can towers) for a few years after studying physics at Carleton College.

For more information you might also consult, the formal cv.

Below is a 3rd person short bio, for copy and paste (118 words):
Fred Gibbs is an assistant professor of history at George Mason University and Director of Digital Scholarship at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. His research interests lie at the intersection of natural philosophy and medicine in the late medieval and early modern periods. His current research explores medical literature on poison c.1200-1600, especially how physicians debated its ontological existence and its role in disease. At RR-CHNM, he develops and executes both large and small digital humanities projects sponsored by a variety of funding agencies, including the NEH, NSF, Sloan, and Mellon Foundations. Most of these grapple with the theoretical and practical challenges of using large datasets for historical research. More detailed info at http://historyproef.org

Historyproef gets its name from the Dutch letterproef, which refers to a sheet of type specimens produced by printers as exemplars of their craft. Type sheets are standard fare for all printers, but some Dutch examples I once noticed while perusing a catalog of typesheets immediately resonated with me because of their refined and elegant aesthetic. The form mattered as much as the content.

The name also reflects my interest in combining creative design and expert production. The specimen sheets served not only as a proof-of-concept for type faces and printing devices, but also as proofs of superior craftsmanship and originality. It’s unfortunate that historians too often feel that design must take a back seat to content, when the aesthetics of our work can be as intellectually engaging as the prose itself–and in fact could facilitate new kinds of scholarship that takes advantage of representational freedom beyond words on a page. i like to imagine new ways of doing history, from researching to publishing; i hope to collect and display some interesting specimens here.

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