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Funded work in Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom

BDAD's projects share a structure: an archive that holds records nobody has been able to use at scale, a method that makes them readable, and a research question that only becomes answerable once they are. The partners are the record-holders themselves — national archives and statistical agencies — because infrastructure built without them does not outlive its grant.

 

Current projects

  • Human Capital in the Nordic Countries

    90,028 lives read out of 134 volumes of Norwegian student yearbooks, 1831–1943, and validated against 37,712 hand-transcribed biographies.

    HCNC · with Oslo, UiT and TU Dortmund

  • Geolinking UK Census 1841–1921

    Geocoding and linking eighty years of English and Welsh census returns, with The National Archives as partner.

    AHRC · 2026–2031

  • US Census Transcriptions

    Retranscribing the historical US censuses by machine, so that more people — and a fairer sample of them — can be linked across census rounds.

    With UBC · Working paper

  • ATLASS

    Automated transcription and linkage of Swedish archival school data, within the national SwedPop research infrastructure. Led from Gothenburg, with SDU and Duisburg-Essen.

    Swedish Research Council · 2027–2030

  • DANTRADE

    Danish trade and tariff statistics 1830–2000, digitised from the printed volumes with Statistics Denmark. PI: Paul Sharp.

    Carlsberg Foundation · 2026–2028

  • WarMED

    Wartime medical education, physician labour supply, and the consequences for physician quality, the health transition and innovation. PI: Anthony Wray.

    Independent Research Fund Denmark · 2023–2026

  • Normalization

    What happened when Denmark and Sweden closed the institutions for people with disabilities — to them, and to the communities that received them. PI: Volha Lazuka.

    DFF Sapere Aude · 2025–2029

  • Copenhagen Tax Books

    2.1 million taxpayer records, 1862–1919, reconstructing income, wealth and occupational structure in the capital.

    In progress · 2026–

Also running

Project Funder Period BDAD role
Denmark's Path to Economic Development
Structural transformation, free-market trade and migration, 1790 to today		 Independent Research Fund Denmark 2027–2030 Christian Vedel, with Casper Worm Hansen and Asger Mose Wingender (UCPH)
Mapping Nordic Human Capital Carlsberg Foundation 2020– Co-applicant
CHAOS
Converting Historical Accounts into Occupational Scores		 Unfunded / methodological Ongoing Vedel, Johansen, with Matthew Curtis and Julius Koschnick

Completed

Project Funder Period What it produced
Moralization and Polarization Carlsberg Foundation 2022–2025 PI: Christian Møller Dahl
Diffusion of Medical Knowledge Carlsberg Foundation, Research Infrastructure 2022–2024 PI: Christian Møller Dahl
Child Health & School Interventions Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship 2021–2025 Fellow: Volha Lazuka; supervisor: Christian Møller Dahl
Welfare State Expansion
Early-life policies and socioeconomic trajectories		 Independent Research Fund Denmark 2019–2023 Co-applicant. Produced the CIHNR cohort and the toddler-health trial evaluation

Bringing us a project

Most of the work above began with an archive or a research group approaching us about a body of records they could not use. If that describes you, see Work with us.

 

Last Updated 17.09.2026