Public Health, Artisanal Activities, Daily Life in Medieval Bologna: Digital Projects as Teaching Tools for Urban History

This paper examines how the material from two digital projects, the 1296–7 Estimi online library and the Healthscaping Medieval Bologna webgis, can be used as teaching materials for urban history students. These projects provide students with an interactive means to access primary source material and present a vivid and nuanced picture of how the medieval city of Bologna balanced its vibrant artisanal population and its economic activities, with sanitary and hygiene needs. Instructors can incorporate the material from these two projects into lectures on medieval urban history and pre-modern public health and can also use them to teach specific skills including 1) medieval Latin and paleography, 2) data collection and analysis, and 3) GIS visualization. The data from these two projects is in an accessible form for instructors and this material can be adapted to suit the needs of students. In short, by integrating the data from these two projects, it is possible to present students with a rich case study and at the same time gives them the opportunity to explore the sources themselves, and further their own interests and skills.