I use PowerBI to connect data analysis with academic research and teaching.
It helps me explore trends and show how data can be applied in different areas, including the humanities.

These dashboards are built for interaction, so explore freely.
You can click on anything without worrying about breaking it.

The question remains: How can we bring this into the classroom?

Using visual narratives can be an effective way to make these connections clearer and more accessible for students.
Below is a narrative example that could be useful in culture courses to illustrate the interaction between political events, public health, and cultural expression in 18th-century Europe.

This visual dashboard shows an overview of the cultural, political, and artistic trends in 18th-century Europe, with a focus on France, and includes the impact of key events and causes of death during the period.

The Literary Impact by Country chart shows how France led in themes such as Enlightenment and Patronage, while England focused on Critique and Conflict. These intellectual movements contributed to significant events like the French Revolution, as shown in the Average Lifespan, Death, and Year by Event chart. During this time, average lifespans dropped sharply, and deaths spiked due to both political conflict and violence.

In the Average Lifespan, Event, and Cause of Death graph, we see how epidemics such as the plague, cholera, smallpox, and tuberculosis also played a critical role in reducing lifespans across Europe. Disease outbreaks combined with political instability, create the challenges faced by populations during events like the Napoleonic Wars and the French Revolution.

The Queen and School of Arts chart highlights the cultural patronage of figures like Marie Antoinette and Josephine de Beauharnais, who supported artists like Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Jacques-Louis David. However, their influence diminished as political unrest grew, leading to the collapse of the monarchy. This is reflected in the Event, Death, and Year by Leader and Event chart, which connects leaders such as Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte to key historical events that resulted in both high death tolls and cultural shifts.

The Literary Impact by Year chart shows the rise of Enlightenment ideas and other cultural movements during critical periods. These shifts in thought are mirrored in the Artist/Writer by Political Influence graph, which tracks how political change influenced increased literary and artistic production. Artists and writers responded to themes like revolution, satire, and nationalism during periods of political upheaval.

Overall, these graphs illustrate how political upheaval, widespread disease, and intellectual movements shaped both public health and cultural expression throughout the 18th century.

This is just one way data can be integrated into the classroom with the depth of analysis tailored to suit the needs of the discussion.

Assessments could focus on both content comprehension and data interpretation skills. Here are a few possibilities:

Data Analysis Assignment: Ask students to analyze a specific graph from the dashboard and explain the relationship between the historical events and the trends shown, such as the impact of the French Revolution on public health or artistic expression.

Historical Narrative Project: Have students create their own narrative based on the data, linking key events, public health, and cultural shifts, demonstrating how they interpret the data in historical context.

Comparative Essay/Visual: Assign students to compare the trends of one country (e.g., France) with another country’s data from the same period, focusing on how different political, social, or health events shaped cultural developments.

Visual Presentation: Students could be asked to create their own visual representation of data related to 18th-century history using PowerBI or another tool, followed by a brief presentation explaining their choices and analysis.

Discussion-Based Assessment: Engage students in a class discussion where they interpret and explain different aspects of the data, justifying their analysis with specific historical events or cultural trends.

I hope you find this useful. Get in touch if you’d like to know more.
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