UN Speeches Research
Deep dives and data analysis uncovering trends, patterns, and insights from over 75 years of General Assembly debates.
Most Quoted People
Who do world leaders cite to claim moral authority? From Mandela to Churchill, we analyze the most frequent citations in the last 15 years.
The Greenlandic Pivot
From Cold War strategic coordinate to global climate harbinger. A 75-year evolution of sovereignty thinking in the UN Hall.
The Two-State Solution
From 1947 partition to 2024 urgency. How a concept took 54 years to become the universal diplomatic framework for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Rearmament Discourse
From Cold War confrontation to moral critique. How UN speeches about military buildup changed from superpower accusations to small-nation advocacy.
AI-Assisted Humanities Research
This research was conducted using Claude Code, an AI coding agent, to explore whether such tools can meaningfully enhance research in the humanities.
Conversational Exploration
Instead of writing queries from scratch, research questions are posed in natural language. The AI agent translates these into SQL queries, iterates on results, and surfaces patterns that might otherwise require significant technical expertise to uncover.
Database Enhancement
The agent helped design and populate new database tables (like quotations and notable figures), write extraction scripts with proper Unicode handling, and validate results through sampling and temporal analysis.
Pattern Recognition
By rapidly testing hypotheses ("Who gets quoted more: philosophers or religious figures?"), the agent enables exploratory research that would traditionally require days of manual query-writing and data processing.
Iterative Refinement
The workflow involves constant iteration: finding false positives, adjusting patterns, re-running analysis, and validating against source material. The agent maintains context across sessions, learning from debugging to improve extraction quality.
The Research Question
Can coding agents like Claude Code make humanities research more accessible? Traditional digital humanities work requires expertise in programming, databases, and statistical analysis. AI assistants may lower these barriers, allowing researchers to focus on interpretation rather than implementation.
This project serves as a case study: every research page here was created through conversation with an AI agent, from initial data exploration to final visualization. The agent wrote the SQL queries, Python scripts, and React components—guided by human questions and judgment.