The English edition of Programming Historian seeks proposals for new original lessons or translations to be considered for publication in 2026.
Submissions Open: 15 November 2025
Submissions Close: 15 February 2026
What is a Programming Historian lesson?
A Programming Historian lesson is a learn-by-doing resource that empowers readers to develop new, practical knowledge of a computational method or digital tool. Our aim is for readers to be able to apply what they learn to acquire, transform, analyse, visualise, or sustain data in their own research.
Successful lessons centre real datasets and sample code that readers can handle and experiment with. These elements are supported by reflections on methodological decision-making as well as considerations of adaptations to methods or alternative tool options – this is what makes a Programming Historian lesson distinct from software documentation.
Our lessons are aimed at humanities and social science researchers, but are also read by self-learners with other interests. We encourage our authors to write as though they are explaining their method to a colleague or peer, to make lessons as accessible as possible.
What are the benefits of writing a Programming Historian lesson?
Our lessons support readers who want to learn new skills, but the act of writing is also beneficial to authors. Writing to explain a methodology or tool to others deepens your own understanding and knowledge. It empowers your development as a critical, intentional and considered researcher, and is an opportunity to hone your technical writing skills. We encourage you to write about a method or tool and dataset that you know well, and that you have applied, adapted or advanced in your own research.
How to Submit a Proposal
We’ve set up a Google Form which you can submit directly online. There’s also a plain-text version which you can send to us by email, if you prefer.
There is space for you to tell us about the research use case you’d like to centre within your lesson, and for you to explain how you came to use this method or tool as part of your work within the humanities.
Our questions encourage you to think carefully about how your choices of software, programming languages and datasets can support our commitment to openness.
We will also ask you to outline any technical prerequisites and potential limitations of access to this method or tool because our global readership work with different operating systems and have varying computational resources.
It is important to us that our lessons can be translated for use in multilingual research-contexts, so we’ll ask you to consider how your method or tool could be applied or adapted for use with non-English-language data.
If you’re proposing a translation, the form provides an opportunity for you to think about how you could adapt or localise the research use case centred by the original lesson for an English-language readership. We’ll also ask you to share a short translation sample.
At the end of the form, you are invited to provide links to sample code or to a rough draft of your lesson.
Ideas for Proposals
Programming Historian’s English edition is inviting proposals to fill gaps in our lesson directory. Please explore our journal to discover what’s already available, and consider what you might be able to add. You can either:
- Propose an original English-language lesson
- Propose a translation into English of an existing, original Spanish, French, or Portuguese lesson published in one of the other Programming Historian editions. In this call, we would particularly like to encourage proposals for translations of the following lessons:
From Spanish:
From French:
From Portuguese:
If you have an idea, please send us a proposal by 15 February 2026.
Our editorial team will review all proposals, and return feedback by 15 March 2026. Proposals are considered on the basis of how well they serve the needs of the community, and whether they support our journal’s ambitions of openness, global access, multilingualism and sustainability. Selected proposals will be invited for submission as first drafts within 45 days.
In keeping with our commitment to diversity and equal access within digital humanities, we encourage proposals from women, members of marginalised groups, LGBTQ+ members, and peoples from the Global South. With this call, we strongly encourage the participation of Anglophone and multilingual communities beyond North America.
Questions
If you’d like to ask any questions, please write to the Managing Editor of Programming Historian in English, Alex Wermer-Colan or to our Publishing Manager, Anisa Hawes.
Some background about Programming Historian
Launched in 2012, Programming Historian offers more than 250 novice-friendly, multilingual peer-reviewed lessons that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate their research. In recent years, our interdisciplinary publication has expanded to include Spanish, French, and Portuguese editions. Our journals are Diamond Open Access and in that spirit: authors retain copyright, never pay any fees to publish with us, all content is peer-reviewed, and access is always free for readers.
We’re a volunteer-led initiative, supported by the Board of the charity ProgHist Ltd, a small team of publishing staff, and a global community of contributors. We’re funded by a growing network of organisations across Europe, Canada, North America and Latin America who have invested in our success by subscribing to our Institutional Partner Programme.
About the authors
Alex Wermer-Colan is the Academic and Research Director at Temple University Libraries' Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio.
Laura Alice Chapot is an Assistant Researcher in Digital Humanities in the Department of German at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, CA, USA.
Anisa Hawes, Publishing Manager, Programming Historian.