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Researchers from Berlin and Jerusalem explore the evolution of handwriting and writing systems
An international team made up of researchers from Freie Universität Berlin and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is currently investigating how handwriting and writing systems have developed over time. The project “The Principles of Handwritten Script Evolution” is led by digital humanist and Egyptologist Dr. Christian Casey from the Department of History and Cultural Studies at Freie Universität Berlin and statistics expert and mathematician Dr. Barak Sober from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The Volkswagen Foundation is supporting the research project with 299,735 euros in total through its funding initiative “Open Up – New Research Spaces for the Humanities and Cultural Studies,” with 188,745 euros going to Freie Universität Berlin.
Why does handwriting look the way it does – and how has it changed over time? The project “The Principles of Handwritten Script Evolution” is exploring how handwriting, which is shaped by a complex web of physical, cognitive, cultural, and material forces, evolves. “From the tools we write with to the way our hands move and our minds learn, these factors interact to drive the transformation of scripts across millennia. Using historical manuscripts, modern handwriting data, and advanced computational modeling, we aim to uncover the hidden principles that guide script evolution,” says Dr. Christian Casey.
The interdisciplinary team are drawing on linguistics, physics, mathematics, cultural studies, and cognitive science to develop the first comprehensive models of how scripts change – from the smallest stroke variations to sweeping historical shifts.
This research project aims not only to deepen our understanding of human communication and cultural history, but also to offer practical insights for handwriting recognition technology, the preservation of ancient texts, and the future of writing in a digital world.
About the Volkswagen Foundation’s “Open Up” Funding Initiative and “Exploration” Profile Area
The Volkswagen Foundation strives to facilitate particularly innovative and risk-laden research in the humanities and cultural studies through its funding initiative “Open Up – New Research Spaces for the Humanities and Cultural Studies” as well as its profile area “Exploration.” It does so by funding projects that explore fresh perspectives on existing subjects as well as entirely new topics that are especially complex and require a multi-perspective approach. The initiative is designed to encourage scholars to develop unconventional ideas and investigate previously unexplored research topics.
Dr. Christian Casey, Department of History and Cultural Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Email: christian.casey@fu-berlin.de
https://writingthroughtime.github.io/
https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/en
Illustration showing the evolution of how the number “2” is written.
Copyright: Christian Casey
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Illustration showing the evolution of how the number “2” is written.
Copyright: Christian Casey
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