Born in Cologne in 1976, Jörg Hörnschemeyer studied HKI (Computer Science for the Humanities), German Philology and History at the University of Cologne. In 2005, he finished his studies with a thesis on designing and implementing an SVG-based WebGIS application. From 2003 he worked as a software developer for several research projects including: the image database project Prometheus (prometheus-bildarchiv.de) in 2003; the Arachne project (https://arachne.uni-koeln.de/drupal/) at the Archeological Institute of Cologne between 2003 and 2005; the Critical online edition of the reports written by the nuncio Eugenio Pacelli 1917–1929 in 2008. Since 2010 he has worked as research associate at the German Historical Institute in Rome. He received his PhD in 2017 with a thesis in Genetic Editions.