Teaching machines to read the Conquest of America: Unlocking 500 years of real data from the colonial archive with AI

For centuries, the history of colonial Latin America has been trapped in fragile manuscripts that only a handful of specialists could read. This lecture shows how new AI methods are finally teaching computers to read the messy, beautiful handwriting of the 16th to 18th centuries, turning millions of pages of colonial Spanish into searchable “real data” in a matter of weeks instead of centuries. Drawing on projects in Mexican and Spanish archives, it will introduce calligraphy‑specific handwriting-recognition models, tools that map words onto places, and new language technologies that clean and standardise early modern Spanish while preserving its historical accuracy. Beyond the technical breakthroughs, the talk asks what becomes visible when Indigenous communities, enslaved people, traders, healers, and local officials emerge clearly from texts that were previously inaccessible at scale. It will argue that opening these archives is not just a scholarly achievement, but a decolonial intervention: it allows new stories to be told, and supplies today’s large AI models with voices and experiences from Latin America that have been almost entirely missing so far. 

A historical archaeologist, Patricia Murrieta-Flores is a Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence at Tecnológico de Monterrey in México, and a Chair Professor at the History Department at Lancaster University, United Kingdom. She is an international reference in the application of artificial intelligence for the analysis of colonial history and cultural heritage. She has led multiple high-impact research projects funded by organizations such as the ESRC, AHRC, NEH, CONACyT, and Schmidt Sciences, consolidating more than 20 international grants. She is a member of the Royal Historical Society and has held global leadership positions, including Secretary of the Executive Board of ADHO. Her work has been recognized with international awards and more than 70 publications in high-impact scientific journals. In addition, she advises top-tier institutions such as multiple international research councils, the Science Museum in London, and major research infrastructures across Europe.  

This event is free and open to all. It is brought to you by the Institute for the Arts & Humanities, in co-sponsorship with UVA Library DH Center and Global Spanish.