New paper: Growing and Pruning the Archive — An Agent-Based Model to Build Letter Correspondence Networks

Malte Vogl | Sep 22, 2025 min read
Grid of nine panels in three columns: network graphs on top, degree distribution curves in the middle, and shaded maps of Europe at the bottom.

Digital archives are never complete, and that selection bias can quietly distort empirical studies built on them. This paper introduces an agent-based model that simulates both the sending of historical letters and their subsequent loss to archiving, allowing counterfactual correspondence networks to be built and compared against the biased ones we actually observe.

Read the paper

  • Authors: Bernardo S. Buarque, Malte Vogl, and Aleksandra Kaye
  • Journal: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 40(4) (2025)
  • DOI: 10.1093/llc/fqaf081
  • Featured image: figure from the paper