About Us

The Center for Virtual History at the University of Georgia (the CVH) was founded in Fall 2010 by historians Claudio Saunt and Stephen Berry who wanted to find new ways to make the past comprehensible and compelling to students and the public. In all of its projects, the CVH seeks new ways of mapping and visualizing change over time. 3D is just the beginning of the revolution in digital technology. The fourth dimension — time — could and should be rendered too, because it is only then that we feel the humbling weight of history, the immense smallness of the moment we live within, and the great story that has unfolded over millennia on the ground beneath our feet. The CVH provides the seed data for each of its projects, but each is then opened to the public so that anyone with a passion for history can participate in rebuilding lost worlds. Much as sites like zooniverse call on “citizen scientists” and amateur astronomers to help gather and analyze data about the stars, the CVH involves “citizen historians” in the amassing and analyzing of historical data. CVH projects, then, not only reach a broader public but involve a broader public, and remind us that for good and ill the past belongs to us all.