Research for Everyone—Making Lost Writing Readable Again

20 October 2022, by Newsroom editorial office

Researchers from the cluster of excellence in the lab

Photo: Universität Hamburg

Yvan Chevchuck works on steadily improving and further developing methods to retrieve lost or erased writing. Researchers from different disciplines turn to him for help.

In the fourth episode of Universität Hamburg’s Research for Everyone series, Yvan Chevchuk and Kyle Ann Huskin from the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts talk about the techniques they use to reconstruct lost or erased writing in manuscripts and written works.

The main technology used to recover old texts is called “multispectral imaging.” This technology involves taking numerous photographs at various light wavelengths in a dark room. Researchers create a spectral dataset in a video. The data are then evaluated using a computer. The textual sources studied using this technology range from Plato’s early works to payment logs from World War II.

Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts

In the Understanding Written Artefacts cluster of excellence, researchers study the development and purposes of written artefacts in manuscript cultures, from their beginnings in ancient Mesopotamia to the digital age. The starting point is always the organic or inorganic artefact, which consists of hard or flexible material, and both the writing and traces of production, use, and in some cases adapted use.

Why research is important for everybody

What do researchers at Universität Hamburg actually study? And what does their work have to do with the world outside the University? In the Research for Everyone series, researchers introduce their research area in short films and explain the concrete questions they address and how. The series is part of the knowledge portal Wissen für alle, which bundles all of Universität Hamburg’s public outreach offers. This includes, for example, Science on Tap, when University researchers introduce their work in bars and pubs, the podcast Wissenswelle, and the Children’s University Lectures.

The Universität Hamburg project grew out of the Excellence Strategy of the Federal and State Governments. One of the University’s major goals is sharing knowledge with the public.