Abstract: In this talk I will present the status of the research project Link-Lives, a collaboration between the Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet), Copenhagen City Archives (Københavns Stadsarkiv) and the University of Copenhagen. The main of the project is to extend the range of register- research, based on Danish data, from decades to centuries. By combining historical research methods with deep learning techniques, we are reconstructing life-courses and family relations of almost everyone who lived in Denmark from 1787 until the introduction of the modern Danish Civil Registration System in 1968. This will open up novel avenues for research, with life-course and multigenerational approaches of value not only for historians, but also for health and social scientists. The data required to do that has already been transcribed and can be found in the form of more than 50 millions of historical records unconnected and fragmented which have been transcribed under different archives crowdsourcing projects, proprietary collections and research databases. Since the project started in 2019 we have been developed the historical methods and research necessary to convert these collections into individual-level multigenerational data that can be used for research. In my talk, I will first illustrate the challenges that this type of large-scale data integration involves, I will discuss our progress so far, as we are getting ready to produce our first official public data release for the period 1787 and highlight what lies in the future, in terms of our own research with the data that we are creating and potential collaborations.
The meeting will be held in person at Social Sciences meeting room M (V17-109a-2) and online via Zoom.