At the end of summer, the 5th Conference of the Society of Historical Demography took place in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. It was attended by 227 experts from 34 countries. The papers were very diverse, covering traditional topics such as fertility, nuptiality and mortality, but also new research challenges arising from the use of state-of-the-art technology. However, the biggest problem for historical demographers still persists, and that is the quality and interpretative value of historical sources, which can vary considerably across countries and centuries. Our team was represented at this event by Alice Velková and Věra Slováková with their presentation “The use of HISCO and HISCLASS schemes in historical demography. Possibilities and limits”. The use of the HISCO system for occupational categorization in the past was a common topic throughout the conference and meeting with foreign colleagues who are dealing with similar problems as our team was methodologically very enriching. More information about the conference is available here.
