Founders and Survivors: Australian Life Courses in Historical Context; 1803-1920

June 18, 2010 at 6:54 pm · Filed under digital humanities, history

Founders and Survivors: Australian Life Courses in Historical Context; 1803-1920

Project report. Dr Craig Bellamy, VeRSI, June 2010

I recently attended a project workshop for the ARC funded Founders and Survivors project:  http://www.foundersandsurvivors.org Led by Professor Janet McCalman from the University of Melbourne, Associate Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart from the University of Tasmania, and an interdisciplary team of genealogists, demographers, and population health researchers; the project seeks to link the most important records about the convict system in Tasmania to uncover new knowledge about the system and the lives of the people within it.

The project — at a reasonably early stage—presented many of the interim results of digitising and parsing the data about the 72,500 convicts that were transported to Tasmania in the first half of the 19^th Century. The convict records in Tasmania are some of the most significant and detailed records of the lives, socio-economic position, bodies, and health of any group in the 19^th Century.  The project has the bold ambition of not only linking and analysing the convict records, but also linking other detailed institutional records; such as Australian military records, to gain a rich, intergenerational perspective of the health and lives of Australians.  No other settler society has such intimate details of its founding population.

In one of the earlier presentations, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart explained that the records are being digitised, analysed, and presented according to significant life events. These events include birthplace, upbringing, and trial, the voyage to Australia, the convict’s behaviour under sentence and their cause of death. Many convict records and registers have already been digitised and made available through the State Library of Tasmania and other institutions, but many hours are also being spent painstakingly transcribing muster records, pardon records, departures, absconders, apprehensions, certificates of freedom, and other records that ‘fill the gaps’ to assist in reconstructing the chain of events that make up the lives of the largely working class people who were transported to Tasmania. There are 456, 663 records recorded in the system so far.

Associate Professor John Bass, who is mainly responsible for liking the data, explained to me in a coffee shop in Salamanca Place in Hobart, how the records are linked, the decisions that are made in matching, linking, and the eventual historical analysis of the data. John has been involved in record linking projects for many years; primarily in the health sector (to such a degree that he was awarded an Order of Australia for his work). He explained how he searchers for a ‘linkage key’ (name, date of birth, etc.) from say, the records from a particular convict voyage and then matches this to other records of ‘arrival’ or ‘leave of pardon’ or ‘marriage’. It is not a purely scientific endeavour and the raw data is later used by the historian who will formulate this evidence into their broader historical arguments (and the data is held in separate databases and links stored separately). As Hamish Maxwell-Stewart explained in one of his presentations, matching rates are generally high at above 50% but some; as in matching ‘arrival’ with ‘death’ or ‘departure’ has been higher. Only about 20% of ‘arrival’ and ‘death’ records have been matched so far, but the samples have produced some remarkable results.

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart discovered some interim results from analysis of the surgeons’ sick-list on the very long, 4-6 month voyage the convict ships took to get to Tasmania. He graphed what diseases where prevalent at what stage of the voyage (scurvy, digestive system, fever etc.) and speculated upon the broader policy arrangements or period of the voyage that may have contributed to the disease.  An argument repeatedly made by many of the historians at the meeting was that as long as the convict survived the voyage, transportation may have extended their life expectancy as life in a penal colony in Tasmania may have been healthier than working-class life  in 19^th Century Britain.  However, Janet McCalman did stress the need to see results from the whole population first so that the sub-studies could be contextualised (and it isn’t good research practice to release results too soon as later results may contradict earlier results).

In 1834 at the age of 20, my great grandfather, Francis Fitzmaurice, was transported to Tasmania for stealing clothes. After a long history of well-documented recalcitrance in the convict system in Tasmania; being freed, having children, imprisoned, and freed again, he died of exposure to the elements on June 10, 1883.  I wonder if this is why I wear such large woolly jackets in the winter.

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Menzies Lecture by Professor Graeme Davison, Monash University, Australia

October 23, 2009 at 9:32 am · Filed under events, history

Professor Graeme Davidson, an Historian from Monash University in Australia, delivered the annual Menzies Lecture at King’s College London on Tuesday Night (20th October).  The lecture is one of the events from the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at King’s College. In his lecture titled ‘Narrating the Nation’ Graeme discussed the foundation narratives that settlers societies such as Canada, Australia, and the US have in common and the religious undertones of such narratives (I believe the transcript will be online again soon). The event was the first official event held in the Anatomy theatre at King’s recently renovated by the Centre for eResearch (CeRch) and Professor Alan Reid of Theatre Studies.

Professor Graeme Davidson

‘Narrating the nation’

Professor Carl Bridge, Director of the Menzies Centre

Dr Ian Henderson, Lecturer at the Menzies Centre and his partner Kwesi.

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The ‘Dark Side’ of the Enlightenment

July 23, 2009 at 1:36 pm · Filed under digital humanities, digitisation, history

“The Alchemist in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone,” by Joseph Wright, 1771

Dan Edelstein, a Stanford French professor, has been exploring an aspect of the Age of Enlightenment that is less familiar to most, the so-called “dark side” of the enlightenment. He described the differentiating factors. “The prevailing understanding of the enlightenment is one in which there was only scientific and rational thinking, but there was also a significant number of people contributing to the enlightenment who were absorbed in dubious scholarly pursuits like alchemy, mythology, astrology and secret societies.”(link)

These ‘dubious scholarly pursuits’ are still with us. ‘Web 2′ perhaps?

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A vision of Britain through time

July 7, 2009 at 9:47 am · Filed under digital humanities, digitisation, history

Another fantastic resource from the JISC.

The JISC-funded A Vision of Britain Through Time website launches today,
giving access, often for the first time, to over two centuries’ worth of
facts, figures, surveys, maps, election results and travel writing showing
how 15,000 UK places have changed.

The changing story of Britain’s towns and villages can be explored in new
depth online, which unites more than 200 years worth of official documents,
maps and travel stories. http://vision.port.ac.uk/

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Science and Heritage Post-doctoral Fellowships Call

June 12, 2009 at 9:51 am · Filed under digital humanities, history, humanities computing

(This would be  a great opportunity for those interested in pursuing a career in public history. You have to be less that five years out of your PhD;  I am 6 years out. Damn! )

(The Harley Davidson ‘Heritage’. A legendary synthesis between science and heritage )

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) are taking forward a joint £8.1m programme entitled Science and Heritage to support leading-edge research which will explore new ways to understand the cultural and physical nature of heritage and to prepare society for the challenges that cultural heritage will face in the 21st Century.

As part of this Science and Heritage programme, AHRC and EPSRC are offering Post-doctoral Fellowships to enable outstanding early career researchers to establish independent research careers in heritage science. Potential candidates should have up to, but no more than the equivalent of five years’ post-doctoral experience. The fellowships will be for a duration of three years full time (up to 5 years part time) and will primarily cover the salary costs of the Fellow, travel and subsistence and consumables.

Funding is available to support between four and six Post-doctoral Fellowships.

AHRC is administering this call on behalf of AHRC and EPSRC.

The deadline is 4pm Thursday 10 September 2009
Further Information:

More details can be found on the AHRC website

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Roy Rosenzweig fellowship for innovation in digital history

April 21, 2009 at 1:40 pm · Filed under digital humanities, history, humanities computing

(Roy Rosenzweig is the founder of the Centre for History and New Media at George Mason University in the US. The centre is progressive in both its approach to history and technological innovation. This fellowship may be of interest to you budding digital humanists out there).

In 2009, George Mason University and the American Historical Association will offer the first Roy Rosenzweig Fellowship for Innovation in Digital History. This award was developed by friends and colleagues of Roy Rosenzweig (1950–2007), Mark and Barbara Fried Professor of History and New Media at George Mason University, to honor his life and work as a pioneer in the field of digital history.

Read the rest of this entry »

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The Virtual Museum of the Pacific: A Semantic Web-based Content Management System

February 12, 2009 at 5:07 pm · Filed under Virtual Reseach Environments, collaboration, digital humanities, history, web2.0, wiki

The Virtual Museum of the Pacific (VMP) is a Rich Internet Application with a Web Services architecture used to manage and navigate 400 objects from the Australian Museum’s (http://www.austmus.gov.au/) Pacific Island collections. This project tests a new means of facilitating access for Indigenous people and researchers to museum-based digital collections whose artefacts are physically distributed and often not on public display. The project has two dimensions: at the technical level the focus is on leveraging metadata used in curatorial management to produce a Web-based content management system for representing collection resources as a dynamic associative network; at a museological level the focus is on studying the effective means of presenting and interacting with this semantic network for traditional owners, the general public, researchers and curators (link)

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Redmond Barry 1854 fellowship

February 12, 2009 at 4:56 pm · Filed under history

The University of Melbourne solicits proposals for its Redmond Barry 1854 fellowship. The fellowship facilitates research by enabling scholars to access the collections of the State Library of Victoria and the University of Melbourne.

This programme aims to: promote the library and its support for scholarly activity and research; support research that would benefit from an intense period of activity and focus in Melbourne; and encourage scholarly use of the general collections and specialist resources of the library and the university.

Applications are invited from scholars from Australia and overseas. Up to $20,000 will be awarded to assist with travel, living and research expenses. Fellows will be based at the library for three to six months (you will have to search for the link; I got sent this via email. Thanks to Menzies Centre; King’s College).

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Project Manager, Essex

December 19, 2008 at 3:57 pm · Filed under digital humanities, history, humanities computing

Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) Project

This major new project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and located in the Department of History at the University of Essex, in collaboration the UK Data Archive. In conjunction with key commercial partners, the project will create an enhanced census data collection for Great Britain covering the period 1851 to 1911. An experienced manager is now being sought to play a leading role in this high-profile, path-breaking project.

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New postdoc position at Monash University, Australia

August 14, 2008 at 9:10 am · Filed under art, digital humanities, history

*Post-Doctoral Research Fellow*

*Centre for Electronic Media Art*

*Clayton School of Information Technology
Faculty of Information Technology*

This ARC funded research position investigates the application of
Artificial Life and nature inspired methods to problems in creative
design. The successful person will work cooperatively on all aspects of
the research and will take particular responsibility for the development
of biologically inspired developmental algorithms and interactive
ecosystem models. For this position, candidates should have a PhD or
equivalent doctoral research qualification, or expect this qualification
to be awarded by the time of appointment. Research experience in one or
more of the following areas is essential: Artificial Life, Adaptive
Systems, Evolutionary Computing, Biological Modelling and Simulation,
Computer Graphics, Java or C++ programming. Knowledge and experience
with artistic, design-based or musical applications of technology are
also required.

Salary range: AUD$61,820-$66,360 pa Level A plus superannuation and benefits

Duration: 1 year fixed term appointment

Location: Clayton campus

Contact: Dr Jon McCormack on 9905 9298 or email
Jon.McCormack@infotech.monash.edu.au
<mailto:Jon.McCormack@infotech.monash.edu.au>.

Applications close: Friday, 31 October 2008

—-
Dr Jon McCormack
Co-Director, Centre for Electronic Media Art (CEMA)
Rm. 144A, Building 63
Clayton School of Information Technology
Faculty of Information Technology
Monash University • Clayton 3800 • Australia
Phone: +61.3.9905.9298 • Mobile: 0412 682 136 • Fax: +61.3.9905.5146
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jonmc
<http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/%7Ejonmc>

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The Desmond Tutu Digital Archive

April 9, 2008 at 11:14 am · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, eresearch, history

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Henry III Fine Rolls Project

October 3, 2007 at 11:37 pm · Filed under digital humanities, history, humanities computing

The Henry III Fine Rolls Project is a three year enterprise commencing in April 2005, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It aims to publish the Fine Rolls of Henry III from 1216 down to 1248. It is hoped that a second three year project will complete publication down to the end of the reign in 1272.

There is a fine roll for each of Henry III’s fifty-six regnal years held in the National Archives at Kew in the record series C 60. Containing offers of money to the king for a multiplicity of concessions and favours, as well as a great deal of other material, they are of the first importance for the study of political, governmental, legal, social, and economic history.

With the aim of making the material accessible to a wide audience, the rolls are being published in English translation, both in book form with Boydell and Brewer, and on the KCL Website where they are linked to a sophisticated search engine and the digitised images of the rolls.

The project is the result of close co-operation between the The National Archives and the History Department and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s (link).

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Peer review and evaluation of digital resources for the arts and humanities

September 25, 2007 at 2:12 am · Filed under digital humanities, history, humanities computing

The mechanisms for the evaluation and peer review of the traditional print outputs of scholarly research in the arts and humanities are well established, but no equivalent exists for assessing the value of digital resources and of the scholarly work which leads to their creation. This project proposes to establish a framework for evaluating the quality, sustainability and impact over time of digital resources for the arts and humanities, using History, in its broadest sense, as a case study (link).

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What is InscriptiFact?

June 3, 2007 at 1:35 am · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, education, history, humanities computing, internet

I am at the e-science earlier adopters forum for Arts and Humanities researchers at NCSA (the National Centre for Supercomputer Applications)� where this project is being presented. It is possible to search the photographs in this project by inscription. Pretty nifty huh?

The InscriptiFact Project is a database designed to allow access via the Internet to high-resolution images of ancient inscriptions from the Near Eastern and Mediterranean Worlds. The target inscriptions are some of the earliest written records in the world from an array of international museums and libraries and field projects where inscriptions still remain in situ. Included are, for example, Dead Sea Scrolls; cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia and Canaan; papyri from Egypt; inscriptions on stone from Jordan, Lebanon and Cyprus; Hebrew, Aramaic, Ammonite and Edomite inscriptions on a variety of hard media (e.g., clay sherds, copper, semi-precious stones, jar handles); and Egyptian scarabs. These ancient texts represent religious and historical documents that serve as a foundation and historical point of reference for Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the cultures out of which they emerged (link).

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CHArt (COMPUTERS AND THE HISTORY OF ART) TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONFERENCE

May 28, 2007 at 11:47 pm · Filed under art, conferences, design, digital humanities, events, history, humanities computing, web2.0

DIGITAL ARCHIVE FEVER

Thursday 8 – Friday 9 November 2007
Central London Venue to be confirmed

Museums, galleries, archives, libraries and media organisations such as publishers and film and broadcast companies, have traditionally mediated and controlled access to cultural resources and knowledge. What is the future of such ‘top-down’ institutions in the age of ‘bottom-up’ access to knowledge and cultural artifacts through what is generally known as Web 2:0 – encompassing YouTube, Bittorrent, Napster, Wikipedia, Google, MySpace and more. Will such institutions respond to this threat to their cultural hegemony by resistance or adaptation? How can a museum or a gallery or, for that matter, a broadcasting company, appeal to an audience which has unprecedented access to cultural resources? How can institutions predicated on a cultural economy of scarcity compete in an emerging state of cultural abundance?

For the twenty-third CHArt conference we are looking for papers that reflect upon these issues, particularly in relation to visual culture. We particularly welcome contributions from those working in either ‘traditional’ cultural organisations or those involved in new forms of cultural access and distribution.

We welcome contributions from all sections? of the CHArt community: Art Practice; Art History; Museums; Galleries; Curation; Archives; Libraries; Education; Media and Broadcast Production; Cultural Assets Management and Access; Hardware; Software; Theory.

CHArt also hopes to offer a bursary scheme again this year (supported by the AHRC ICT Methods Network) to Post Graduate students presenting papers.

Please email submissions (a three hundred word synopsis of the proposed paper with brief CV of presenter/s and other key figures) by 30 June 2007 to Hazel Gardiner (hazel.gardiner@kcl.ac.uk).

Dr Charlie Gere
Chair, CHArt

CHArt
c/o Centre for Computing in the Humanities Kings College, University of London Kay House
7 Arundel Street
WC2R 3DX

- CALL FOR PAPERS – DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 30 JUNE 2007 -? CALL FOR PAPERS -

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