About the project
Contemporaries Network is a platform that uses Wikidata and Wikipedia to create a dynamic atlas of prominent personalities who lived about the same time and may or may not have shared a connection.
Ever wondered who people in China listened to when the Beatles were topping the charts in Britain? Would be curious to know how many Prime Ministers post-fascist Italy elected while Franco was still in power in Spain? Not one-hundred percent convinced that Shakespeare wrote his plays himself and would like to check out other candidates for the authorship? Whether it is the times of the Bard, Caudillo or Lennon you are interested in, type the name in the search box, apply the filters and start exploring!
Anyone with an article in Wikipedia could be found and located on a map. 20 of their most notable contemporaries and connections between them will be shown straight away. Dropped pins will mark the places of birth and profile cards will form the entries in the convenient summary table that could be pulled over the map from the bottom of your screen. 20 doesn't sound like enough? No problem, load more people by scrolling down the table and pressing the button. Curious what else the app could do? Then what are you still doing reading this?! Jump to the home page and find out all the amazing features for yourself.
About us
Contemporaries Network is a passion project of Katia and Mark. We are a mixed Ukrainian-British couple with a shared interest in history, programming and data analysis. Although, let's be completely honest, programming and data analysis are more than just interests. It is what we do for a living: Mark is a Software Developer, Katia has a degree in AI. But when it comes to history we are enthusiastic amateurs. More often then not, to find the answers to our questions we rely on Wikipedia. We also belong to a generation that wasn't forced to memorise dates of Kings and Queens at school. At best, we could arrange them in order and say that Edward III succeeded to the throne of Edward II and both lived in times of Chaucer. But already couldn't confidently say who ruled over Kyiv at the same time. Same goes for contemporaneous Japanese shoguns or Persian poets.
So we decided to put together our skills and build an app that would satisfy our own curiosity and help with our very “unscientific” enquiries. We called the app Contemporaries Network. If you are reading this, you have probably been asking similar questions and in the process of asking stumbled upon our app. Hope, you will find it useful and entertaining! Have fun!
Contact Us
If you'd like to share feedback with us, we would be very happy to hear from you at contact@contemporariesnetwork.com