Why create a research blog for a project? How to feed it, which formats of articles to put forth, and which disciplinary traditions to embrace? Indeed, if historians extensively blog, this is not a common practice among other disciplines, such as computer science. Moreover, which collective processes to adopt for a project that does not mobilize all its members equally and along the same temporality? Starting with these questions, this article discusses key elements that guided the editorial project of this blog.
When ObARDI’s research program started in January 2021, it appeared important to take the time to reflect about its online research blog and to determine a clear editorial policy. To that end, we reviewed various blogs which content appealed to us, such as those of French social scientists Caroline Muller (Acquis de conscience. Histoire(s) de XIXe siècle), Aurore Turbiau (Littératures engagées. Féminisme et lesbianisme dans l’histoire littéraire), or Émilien Ruiz (Devenir historien-ne. Méthodologie de la recherche et historiographie); as well as other sites and blogs, both in French (e.g., Politka and EHNE) and in English (e.g., VoxEU, The Long Run, or Broadstreet). These helped structure our thoughts about our potential readership and the type of content to offer to them.