Ann-Lauren Osthof and Jenny Gabel Win the Peter Haber Prize for Digital History

29 September 2025

The two early-career researchers have been awarded the prestigious prize, presented by the Working Group for Digital History (AG Digitale Geschichtswissenschaft), for a poster presentation on their research project ‘Immersive City Scripts’ at the 55th Historikertag in Bonn.

The project that both Ann-Lauren Osthof and Jenny Gabel have been working in combined classical studies, digital humanities, computer science, and virtual reality development in an innovative way. It did not only involve documenting and studying the ancient Greek inscriptions in the ancient theatre of Miletus in textual and material form, but also spatially reconstructing them in a detailed, immersive VR environment and making them accessible to both researchers and the public.

In the virtual environment, the original findspots of the inscriptions have been digitally recreated, so that they are displayed at their actual positions within the theatre. Together with reconstructions of now missing/not preserved parts of the theatre, the VR setting allows the texts of the inscriptions to be viewed from various perspectives and distances, providing new insights into their function, significance, and perception in their archaeological and socio-cultural context. In sum, they highlight the multifunctional use of the theatre through different time periods.

The poster presented by the two researchers is available online.

The Peter-Haber-Prize acknowledges outstanding work in the field of digital history, especially innovative projects, research or contributions that are distinguished by methodological, conceptual, or practical excellence at the interface of history and digital methods or tools. The prize is primarily aimed at doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers who make innovative research, software, tools, databases, or other forms of digital scholarship openly available, or who have made exceptional contributions to communicating digital methods in the historical sciences. The award commemorates the Swiss historian Peter Haber (1964–2013), regarded as one of the pioneers of digital history in the German-speaking world.