Historian of intimacy and revolution in 1920s-40s Europe. New project: anti-Nazi vegetarians.
Author of Irish Book Awards shortlisted HOTEL LUX — about a hotel in 1920s Moscow — and radical history newsletter Archive Rats:
archiverats.substack.com
Maurice J. Casey
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In short, it's a nerdy version of the zettlekasten note taking system.
For a long time I have tuned it to my distinct needs of working on border-crossing clandestine organisations. It's taking me a while to iron out those specificities lol
Fin Dwyer invited me to make a series on Ireland's global revolution. There's been nine episodes, final one coming next Friday. So far race, religion, antisemitism, India & Egypt, smuggling, the Bolsheviks, activity in America and Britain ...
shows.acast.com/irishhistory...
Maurice J. Casey
Thousands have turned out for an Anti-Racism rally in Belfast city centre, organised by United Against Racism and supported by Trade Unions
The idea: you make a note for each person, location, organisation you research.
You can create simple links between notes, but you can also build family trees within the people notes. It's designed to work with Zotero too, so a project-wide bibliography auto updates.
The software it runs on (Obsidian) is totally free.
It operates locally on your PC. All the notes are just text files that sit in a folder so you can use whatever cloud storage you have to back it up. You can work between devices too (I've created a mobile style for the notes).
Video
A while back I created my own note-taking application by using code + Obsidian. It's a way of organising research grounded in social networks/collective biography.
I've since refined it and I'm working on an open source version I'll share more widely. Here is a quick preview:
