“AI and Oral History: Applications in Holocaust Testimonies” an open lecture on 25.11 by Maria Dermentzi and Hugo Scheithauer
HDSM announces the next week’s online lecture. On 25 November, Monday at 14:25 (CET) Maria Dermentzi and Hugo Scheithauer give an open talk titled “AI and Oral History: Applications in Holocaust Testimonies”. This lecture is a part of the Voices Unbound: Lecture Series on Digital Oral History seminar.
This event accommodates a hybrid format, offering an opportunity to join online. To join us and secure your spot please follow the instructions on Evenbrite page.

Maria Dermentzi is a digital humanities consultant. Previously, she worked at King’s College London, where she developed AI-powered tools for history research in the context of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure. She holds an MSc in Digital Humanities from KU Leuven, an MA in Digital Culture and Society from King’s College London, and a degree in Law from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Hugo Scheithauer, PhD student in the Inria Paris ALMAnaCH project-team, works on document layout analysis, automatic text recognition, and information extraction for historical documents. He holds a dual MA in Art History from Columbia University and Sorbonne University, and an MA in Digital Humanities from the École nationale des chartes (National School of Charters), Paris.
The abstract of the lecture is as follows:
This lecture will focus on the application of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology, specifically OpenAI’s Whisper model, to transcribe oral testimonies from the Holocaust. We will discuss what makes ASR for oral Holocaust testimonies challenging and present examples of successes and failures. The lecture will also cover post-processing techniques for automatically generated transcripts, including Named Entity Recognition (NER). Participants will gain insights into how AI tools can support oral history research and why domain expertise is key to correcting and interpreting the results of these tools.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
valentinaprishchepova (November 18, 2024). “AI and Oral History: Applications in Holocaust Testimonies” an open lecture on 25.11 by Maria Dermentzi and Hugo Scheithauer. HDSM. Retrieved May 16, 2025 from https://hdsm.hypotheses.org/4288