b'DigiPal'http://www.digipal.eu/blog/2018-02-27T09:30:42+00:00TrueDigiPal wins Inaugural MAA Digital Humanities Prize2017-01-15T14:41:48+00:002017-01-17T22:23:28+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-wins-maa-prize/<p>We are very happy and honoured to announce that the DigiPal project has won the inaugural <a href="https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/page/DHPrize">Digital Humanities Prize</a> of the Medieval Academy of America. <a href="http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/maa-blog-inaugural-medieval-academy-digital-humanities-prize/">The full citation</a> notes that</p>
<blockquote>DigiPal’s innovative framework, collaborative origins, open access, quality design, and skillfully curated pilot collection make it an excellent model for the practice of digital humanities scholarship in the field of medieval studies.</blockquote>
<p>I personally want to thank all the people who have contributed to DigiPal as a project and to the <a href="https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal">free and open-source software</a> that we have continued to develop since the project finished in 2014; these thanks include the European Research Council who funded the whole project through an <a href="https://erc.europa.eu/funding-and-grants/funding-schemes/starting-grants">ERC Starting Grant</a>. The citation formally credits the 'core' DigiPal team of Peter Stokes, Stewart Brookes and Geoffroy Noël, and I certainly want to thank my colleagues Stewart and Geoffroy, but this is only a small seletion of the people who have contributed directly to the project over the last seven years. The DigiPal, <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk">Models of Authority</a> and <a href="http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk">Conqueror's Commissioners</a> (Exon Domeday) projects, as well as smaller projects such as ScandiPal, SephardiPal, ViGOTHIC, and Polices des Caractères et Inscriptions Monétaires, along with the various advisory boards, student interns, and others, brings the total number of contributors to well over 30 people. These people and the <a href="http://www.ahrc.ac.uk">Arts and Humanities Research Council</a>, who funded Models of Authority and the Conqueror's Commissioners, all deserve recognition.</p>
<p>Finally, to give some sense of the significance of this award, here is some text on the Academy and prize (thanks to the MAA's Executive Director, Lisa Fagin Davis, for providing this):</p>
<blockquote>The Medieval Academy of America is the largest organization in the world promoting excellence in the field of medieval studies. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Academy was founded in 1925 and comprises more than 3500 members worldwide. Among other activities, the Academy publishes the quarterly journal Speculum and awards more than a dozen prizes, grants, and fellowships. In 2016, the Council of the Medieval Academy voted to add an annual Digital Humanities Prize to its slate of publication honors. More than twenty digital projects were nominated for the inaugural prize, which is being awarded to DigiPal. The Prize will be presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy, to be held at the University of Toronto from April 6-8. More information about the Medieval Academy can be found at <a href="http://medievalacademy.org">http://medievalacademy.org</a>.</blockquote>
<p>Congratulations again to everyone in the rapidly growing DigiPal community, and I look forward to working with you all more in the years to come.</p>
<h3>Links and References</h3>
<ul>
<li>The DigiPal Project Team: <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/about/project-team/">http://www.digipal.eu/about/project-team/</a></li>
<li>The Models of Authority Project Team: <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/about/project-team/">http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/about/project-team/</a></li>
<li>The Conqueror's Commissioners Project Team: <a href="http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk/about/project-team/">http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk/about/project-team/</a></li>
<li>The free, open-source code for the DigiPal framework: <a href="https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal">https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal</a></li>
<li>Documentation for installing and using the DigiPal framework: <a href="https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal/wiki">https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal/wiki</a></li>
<li>The Medieval Academy of America (MAA): <a href="http://medievalacademy.org">http://medievalacademy.org</a></li>
<li>The MAA Digital Humanities Prize: <a href="https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/page/DHPrize">https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/page/DHPrize</a></li>
<li>Citiation of the inaugural MAA DH Prize (2017): <a href="http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/maa-blog-inaugural-medieval-academy-digital-humanities-prize/">http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/maa-blog-inaugural-medieval-academy-digital-humanities-prize/</a></li>
</ul>
<p>[<em>This article has been cross-posted with minor changes on the <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-wins-inaugural-maa-digital-humanities-prize/">DigiPal</a>, <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/blog/digipal-wins-inaugural-maa-digital-humanities-prize/">Models of Authority</a> and <a href="http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk/blog/digipal-wins-inaugural-maa-digital-humanities-prize/">Conqueror's Commissioners</a> websites.</em>]</p>DigiPal/Models of Authority at DH20162016-07-20T09:43:43+00:002016-07-20T10:00:27+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipalmodels-of-authority-at-dh2016/<p>As noted <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/blog/models-of-authority-at-dh2016/">over on the Models of Authority site</a>, the project team there was represented at Digital Humanities 2016 in Krakow. We presented a poster showing how the DigiPal framework has now been extended to include texts alongside images, and the texts themselves can be marked up according to project-specific schemas in order to allow searching by type of text as well as palaeographic feature. The full abstract is now published online, and the accompanying poster is embedded below. A high-resolution version in PDF is also available by clicking on the image (3.77 MB).</p>
<ul>
<li>P.A. Stokes, S. Brookes, G. Noël, J.R. Davies, T. Webber, D. Broun, A. Taylor, and J. Tucker, J. 'The Models of Authority Project: Extending the DigiPal Framework for Script and Decoration', in <em>Digital Humanities 2016: Conference Abstracts</em>, ed. by Maciej Eder and Jan Rybicki (Krakow, 2016), pp. 896-99. Available at <a href="http://dh2016.adho.org/abstracts/387">http://dh2016.adho.org/abstracts/387</a></li>
</ul>
<p><a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/media/uploads/Blog/2016/dh2016_poster.pdf"><img alt="Image of the Models of Authority poster from DH2016" src="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/media/uploads/Blog/2016/dh2016_poster.jpg" style="border: 1px solid black;" title="DH Poster (click to download high-resolution version)." width="500"/></a></p>
<p><em>Models of Authority Poster, DH2016. Click to download full version (3.77 MB)</em></p>Modelling Codicology II: A Partial Draft Implementation2015-11-18T19:23:17+00:002018-02-27T09:30:42+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/modelling-codicology-ii-a-partial-draft-implementation/<p><span>In </span><a href="http://localhost:8080/blog/modelling-codicology-i-sequence-in-gatherings-folios-and-pages/">the first post in this series</a><span>, I presented the challenge of modelling the codicological structure of a manuscript: not just the page, or the text, but rather how the different pages fit together as bifolia, singletons and so on. I have since developed this further, through a partial implementation using TEI and Schematron. This was presented at the <a href="http://tei2015.huma-num.fr/en/papers/#128">recent TEI conference in Lyon</a>, and I plan to write it up formally, but in the meantime I hope it may be helpful to post here: this is partly in response to recent discussion on the <a href="https://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1511&L=TEI-MS-SIG&D=0&P=68">TEI MS-SIG mailing list</a>, but is also both for your interest and to solicit comments and feedback from you. I have only posted the slides without text, so it may be helpful to explain that part of my objective was to see just how far one could get using TEI. The answer seemed to be 'a pretty long way', insofar as a combination of TEI and Schematron allows one to check many of the rules that I presented <a href="http://localhost:8080/blog/modelling-codicology-i-sequence-in-gatherings-folios-and-pages/">in the first post</a>. Furthermore, representing the codicological structure as an 'OHCO' means that the tree structure of the resulting XML very closely matches the structure of the manuscript, and this means that the built-in visualisation of XML editors such as Oxygen provides a fairly natural way of manipulating the text in terms of its physical pages. That is, one can take the XML, read or edit it in Oxygen's Author view, then switch to the tree structure ('Outline' view in Oxygen) and drag and drop the pages and quires. The Schematron rules will alert you if your arrangement violates any of the rules, and you can then look again at your text in Author view to see how it is changed in the new arrangement. Such a process is therefore possible, but I would not generally recommend it. This is partly because encoding the text, the page and physical structure all in one was not particularly easy or natural because it involves conflating very different models. Furthermore, simply dragging and dropping sections of text is all very well for a single editor but is difficult to manage on a larger scale and does not allow others to test alternative strategies. Hence a proper interface is required, and a means of recording different hypotheses regarding the arrangement. Exactly how such an interface would work is a major task of the <a href="http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk/">Exon Domesday project</a>.</span></p>
<p>That's a brief summary of the talk, anyway. The slides are attached as a PDF below, and the latest version of a (partial) implementation in TEI and accompanying Schematron are available as <a href="https://gist.github.com/pastokes/e80dcd50c86be4351288">Gists on GitHub</a>. Please note that the implementations are very much experimental drafts as a proof of concept and are not intended for serious use (which is partly why they are Gists and not on GitHub proper). However, I hope they are useful as an alternative way of expressing what I have in mind, and of demonstrating some possible directions in which this could potentially be developed.</p>
<p>Enjoy, anyway, and please do let me know what you think.</p>
<p><a href="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/PDFs/stokes_tei_(compressed).pdf" title="Slides from TEI presentation (click for full file as PDF)"><img alt="Title Slide of TEI paper (click for full PDF file)" height="450" src="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/images/blog_posts/2015/.thumbnails/stokes_tei.jpg/stokes_tei-600x450.jpg" style="border: 1px solid black;" title="TEI 2015 slides (click for full PDF file)" width="600"/></a></p>
<p><em><a href="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/PDFs/stokes_tei_(compressed).pdf">Slides of paper for TEI 2015. Click to download file as PDF.</a></em></p>Modelling Codicology I: Sequence in Gatherings, Folios and Pages2015-05-02T18:03:21+00:002015-05-02T18:29:33+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/modelling-codicology-i-sequence-in-gatherings-folios-and-pages/<p>One interesting complication of some medieval manuscripts such as <a href="https://www.digipal.eu/digipal/manuscripts/925/"><em>Liber Wigornensis</em></a> and the <a href="https://www.digipal.eu/digipal/manuscripts/761/">Exon Domesday book</a> is that we do not know the original order of the gatherings. In fact, one of the few things that we know for sure for Exon Domesday is that the order as we have it now is almost certainly not the original. In the <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/blog/a-new-phase-for-digipal-ii-the-conquerors-commissioners-project/">Conqueror's Commissioners project</a> we are producing a digital edition of the manuscript, and so rather than presenting a fixed volume we are hoping to present it in a format whereby you can change the order of the pages yourself and see how the text changes as a result. However, as we all know, the order of pages is not entirely arbitrary: some sequences are more likely than others, and some are physically impossible. A page cannot have both a hair and a flesh side; a folio cannot be both a bifolium and a singleton; and so on. As a first step, then, I have tried to state as many of these definitions and constraints as I can think of, as precisely as possible. A first draft is presented below: please do have a look and send me any comments or corrections, preferably via the 'comments' box below.</p>
<h3>Codicological Constraints</h3>
<ol>
<li>All Folios comprise exactly two Pages.</li>
<li>For parchment, Pages must be either Hair side (H) or Flesh side (F). A Folio must comprise one H Page and one F Page.</li>
<li>For parchment, Pages must be one of Ruling side, Non-Ruling side, or Unruled. A Folio must comprise either one Ruling and one Non-Ruling Page, or two Unruled Pages.<ol>
<li>Pages normally have further properties, for example a given color in the case of parchment.</li>
<li>Folios normally have further properties, for example thickness and stiffness; potentially color in the case of paper.</li>
</ol></li>
<li>A Folio might stand on its own or might be conjoint with another Folio. A standalone folio is called a <em>singleton</em>; the pair of conjoint Folios together is called a <em>bifolium </em>(plural <em>bifolia</em>).</li>
<li>A Gathering comprises one or more Folios<ol>
<li>Any bifolia in a single Gathering must be nested within each other; there is therefore at most one outermost bifolium in any gathering. In principle there can be any number of singletons. </li>
</ol></li>
<li>Sequences of Pages are ordered, as are sequences of Folios and sequences of Gatherings.<ol>
<li>By convention the first Page of a Folio is called the <em>recto</em> and the second page the <em>verso</em>. [Notice that this means that recto and verso are reversed in right-to-left writing systems.]</li>
<li>Rule 5 combined with Rule 2 above requires that every Folio must be either H then F, or F then H. [In practice, it may be more efficient and generalizable to record it this way than associate H and F at the Page level.]</li>
</ol></li>
<li>The order of Pages and Folios is subject to hard constraints. These result from definitions or the bounds of physical possibility and so cannot be broken under any circumstances:<ol>
<li>The recto of one Folio must be the same H/F type as the verso of the conjoint Folio (if there is one). In other words, if the first recto of a bifolium is H then the corresponding verso must be F (from 6 above); the recto of the conjoint folio must then also be F and the verso of the conjoint folio must be H. Alternatively if the recto of a bifolium is F then the sequence is inverted. Bifolia must therefore be one of two types: HFFH or FHHF.</li>
<li>Bifolia must nest and cannot overlap.</li>
<li>Two Pages associated with a given Folio must always be associated with the same Folio (although the position of the Folio may change, as may the relative order of Pages: see 8.2 below).</li>
<li>Two Folios that are identified as conjoint in one bifolium must always be part of the same bifolium (unless a mistake was made in collating, which is possible). In other words, changing the sequence of folios must not result in two conjoint folios becoming disjoint.<ol>
<li>Rules 7.3 and 7.4 imply that four Pages associated with the same bifolium must always be associated with the same bifolium.</li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
<li>The order of Pages is also subject to strong constraints: these can be broken but only very rarely.<ol>
<li>Bifolia are normally ruled either before or after folding. [It's physically possible to rule partly before and partly after folding, but I am not aware of any examples.]<ol>
<li>If a given bifolium is ruled before folding then the Non-Ruling/Ruling sides are subject to the same constraints as Hair and Flesh above (all bifolia must be either NRRN or RNNR, and so on).</li>
<li>If a given bifolium is ruled after folding then the Non-Ruling/Ruling sides are subject to the HF constraints, except that permissible patterns are either RNRN or NRNR.</li>
<li>Similarly, other properties of Pages referred to in 3.1 above also normally extend across bifolia in the pattern XYYX.</li>
<li>Similarly, other properties of Folios referred to in 3.2 above also normally extend to the conjoint folio in the same bifolium. For example, a bifolium is very unlikely to comprise one thick and one thin folios, but is much more likely to comprise two thick folios or two thin folios; and so on. </li>
</ol></li>
<li>It can normally be assumed that the relative order of Pages in a given Folio is fixed, i.e. that a recto Page is always a recto and a verso always a verso.<ol>
<li>Exceptions are possible: a singleton or bifolium could be removed from the book, reversed, and bound in again. [This is very rare but is possisble – an example is <a href="https://www.digipal.eu/digipal/manuscripts/1181/">'Dunstan's Classbook'</a>.]</li>
<li>A singleton is 'reversed' by swapping the order of the two Pages for the relevant Folio: i.e. the recto becomes the verso and vice versa.</li>
<li>A bifolium is 'reversed' by swapping the order of the two Folios, but <em>not</em> the order of the two Pages in each Folio. Thus the sequence of Pages ABCD becomes CDAB. <ol>
<li>This in turn implies that reversing a singleton or bifolium inverts the H/F and R/N types. Thus an HF singleton becomes FH if reversed; an HFFH bifolium becomes FHHF; and so on.</li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
<li>If a Text continues from Page A to Page B then it can be assumed that Page B must immediately follow Page A. <br/><ol>
<li>This implies further constraints on the sequence of Folios and Gatherings if Page A and Page B fall into different Folios or Gatherings.</li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
<li>The order of Folios and Gatherings is subject to light constraints. These are assumed to hold if there is no evidence to the contrary but are broken relatively often in practice:<ol>
<li>If some bifolia are ruled as a unit and there is no evidence to the contrary then it is possible that all bifolia are so ruled. This is particularly likely for bifolia in a given Gathering, less likely across Gatherings.</li>
<li>If two Folios which are not conjoint have exactly the same ruling and pricking then they are likely to be in the same Gathering. The more exact the match the more likely the Gathering is the same, although even a perfect match does not give certainty.</li>
<li>The order of Pages in a given Folio is relatively unlikely to change; the order of Folios in a Gathering is somewhat unlikely to change; the order of Gatherings in a book is relatively likely to change.</li>
<li>The position of a singleton is more likely to change than that of a bifolium.</li>
<li>If a Text at the end of a Folio breaks off abruptly and is followed by a different Text on the following Folio, then it is likely that the two Folios should not be in sequence.<ol>
<li>The abrupt change may be because the Folios are in the 'incorrect' order. If so then there exists a 'correct' order in which the Text does not break off but is complete, in which case this sequence is to be preferred.</li>
<li>Alternatively, the abrupt change may be because one or more Folios are lost. If so then there is no order in which the Text is complete, and so the 'correct' sequence will still include this abrupt change. </li>
</ol></li>
<li>If a Text ends at the end of a Folio and a new Text begins on the following Folio then the two Folios need not be in sequence. (Converse of 9.5 above)</li>
<li>For both 9.5 and 9.6, the likelihood that they are not in sequence increases if:<ol>
<li>The two texts are written in different Hands.</li>
<li>The two texts are in different Gatherings.</li>
<li>The first text is followed by blank space for the rest of the Folio</li>
<li>The first text is followed by blank space for the rest of the Gathering.<ol>
<li>If all of 9.7.1–4 hold for case 9.6 then it is near certain that the gatherings were produced at different times, particularly if the ruling and pricking are different. </li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
<li>If a Text at the end of a Folio is crammed into the end of the verso but then continues on the following Folio, then it is likely that the two Folios are in different but sequential Gatherings.</li>
<li>In our context (eleventh-century England), a Gathering is usually has eight or ten folios and is unlikely to have more than twelve; the likelihood of more than twelve drops quickly to vanishing. (This depends on the time and place, however.)</li>
<li>Gatherings of fewer than eight folios are not uncommon. Single-folio gatherings are unlikely.</li>
<li>Gatherings are more likely to consist primarily of bifolia with fewer singletons.</li>
<li>The normal assumption is that a book is designed with largely the same number of bifolia in each Gathering. (There are relatively numerous examples where this does not hold, though!)</li>
</ol></li>
</ol>One-Year Palaeography Vacancy on Exon Domesday2014-08-14T17:16:19+00:002014-08-14T17:25:38+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/one-year-palaeography-vacancy-on-exon-domesday/<p>As promised in <a href="http://localhost:8080/blog/a-new-phase-for-digipal-ii-the-conquerors-commissioners-project/">an earlier post</a>, we are now receiving applications for a one-year postdoctoral position on the 'Conqueror's Commissioners' project working on the Exon Domesday book. This is a new AHRC-funded project which will build on the DigiPal framework specifically in the context of the Exon Domesday book. The successful applicant will be employed by King's College London but will be based primarily in Exeter. The full advertisement is <a href="https://www.hirewire.co.uk/HE/1061247/MS_JobDetails.aspx?JobID=54068">available online</a> and is reproduced (with minor editing) below:</p>
<blockquote>
<h1>Research Associate in the Department of History</h1>
<p><strong>Reference:</strong> THW/14/059639/103<br/> <strong>Salary Details:</strong> Grade 6 £32,277<br/><strong>Contract Type:</strong> Temporary/Fixed term<br/> <strong>Contract Term:</strong> Full time</p>
<p>This is a one-year post, contributing to the work of Professor Julia Crick (Department of History, King’s College London), Dr Stephen Baxter (St Peter’s College, Oxford) and Dr Peter Stokes (Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London) in their major AHRC project, The Conqueror’s Commissioners: unlocking the Domesday Survey of South-Western England. The successful candidate will work as part of the project team, will have experience in the palaeography and codicology of medieval manuscripts, and have special responsibility for recording the physical construction of the book.</p>
<p>The successful candidate will have a Ph.D on a relevant topic, good knowledge of codicology and palaeography and a working knowledge of medieval Latin. Candidates willing to make independent palaeographical judgements, with experience in handling medieval manuscripts and familiarity with palaeographical literature will be favoured. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills and the ability to work to deadlines are essential. He/she will be able to work independently and to work as a team.</p>
<ul>
<li><span>The closing date for receipt of applications is 04 September 2014.</span></li>
<li><span>Interviews will be held in mid-/late-September tbc.</span></li>
<li><span>Equality of opportunity is College policy.</span></li>
<li><span>The appointment will be made at Grade 6, spine point 31, currently £32,277 per annum.</span></li>
<li><span>Fixed term contract for 12 months.</span></li>
<li><span>Please note that the post holder will be based in Exeter with frequent travel to King’s London campuses.</span></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Closing date:</strong> 04 September 2014</p>
<p>If you have questions about this role, please contact: Professor Julia Crick, Tel: 07969533068, Email: <a href="mailto:Julia.Crick@kcl.ac.uk" title="Julia.Crick@kcl.ac.uk">Julia.Crick@kcl.ac.uk</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Details of how to apply are available from the <a href="https://www.hirewire.co.uk/HE/1061247/MS_JobDetails.aspx?JobID=54068">official web page</a>. Further information about the project is also available from my earlier blog post, <a href="http://localhost:8080/blog/a-new-phase-for-digipal-ii-the-conquerors-commissioners-project/">'A New Phase for DigiPal II'</a>.</p>Two PhD Studentships on Conqueror's Commissioners Project2014-07-25T13:07:45+00:002014-07-25T13:34:03+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/two-phd-studentships-on-conquerors-commissioners-project/<p>As reported in an <a href="http://localhost:8080/blog/a-new-phase-for-digipal-ii-the-conquerors-commissioners-project/">earlier post</a>, the DigiPal framework will be extended through a new AHRC grant to start in October 2014. Part of this includes two new PhD studentships, one in palaeography in the Departments of History and of Digital Humanities at King's College London, and one in History at Oxford. The official press release is available from the <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/about/job/domesday-studentships.aspx">King's College web page</a> and is reproduced in full here:</p>
<blockquote>
<h3>AHRC Project Studentships - Unlocking the Domesday Survey</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/people/staff/academic/crickj.aspx" title="Crick, Professor Julia">Professor Julia Crick</a> (Department of History, King’s College London), Dr Stephen Baxter (St Peter’s College, Oxford) and <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/people/academic/stokes/index.aspx" title="Stokes, Dr Peter">Dr Peter Stokes</a> (Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London) have secured funding from the AHRC for a major project called 'The Conqueror’s Commissioners: Unlocking the Domesday Survey of South-Western England' which will record and interrogate the evidence of the Exeter manuscript of Domesday Book, a unique witness to governmental processes and the locality of south-western England in the reign of William I. The project coincides with the historic disbinding of Exon Domesday and its aim is to publish the contents of the manuscript for the first time and to examine the evidence which the book contains for the conduct of the Domesday survey at both local and central level.</p>
<p>Two project studentships have been funded by the AHRC. Both students will have the benefit of working alongside an interdisciplinary project team, with access to project images, findings and data as they become available; they will be asked to contribute to the production of research reports, conference papers and publications and to present information on research progress and outcomes to supervising bodies.</p>
<ol>
<li>The first studentship will be held at King’s College London. The successful candidate will consider the palaeography of the book in its wider context, looking at script traditions in the locality which the Exon survey covered, investigating connections between record-holding centres in the region and exploring the apparent gulf between local scribal tradition and the hands of Exon Domesday Book. Digital and traditional palaeographical methods will be used. The successful candidate will be based at King’s College London but must have a willingness to travel to archives and libraries elsewhere in search of additional research materials. </li>
<li>The second studentship will be held at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford: Dr Baxter, who is to supervise this student, will move from King’s College London to the History Faculty, Oxford, at the start of the new academic year. The successful candidate will develop a research proposal which explores an aspect of governmental, social, political or economic history using the evidence of Exon Domesday.</li>
</ol>
<p>The deadline for applications for these studentships is <strong>12 August at 12pm</strong>.</p>
<p>Further information on the studentships and the project, including how to apply, can be found <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/about/job/studentships-info.pdf" title="The Conqueror's Commissioners: Unlocking the Domesday Survey of South-Western England">here</a>.</p>
<p>If you have any queries or require further information about the first studentship please email <a href="mailto:julia.crick@kcl.ac.uk" title="Email: Professor Julia Crick">Professor Julia Crick</a> or <a href="mailto:peter.stokes@kcl.ac.uk" title="Email: Dr Peter Stokes">Dr Peter Stokes</a>; for information about the second please contact <a href="mailto:stephen.baxter@kcl.ac.uk" title="Email: Dr Stephen Baxter">Dr Stephen Baxter</a> in the first instance, or <a href="mailto:julia.crick@kcl.ac.uk" title="Email: Professor Julia Crick">Professor Crick</a>.</p>
</blockquote>A New Phase for DigiPal II: The Conqueror's Commissioners Project2014-07-18T08:59:36+00:002016-01-27T12:48:00+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/a-new-phase-for-digipal-ii-the-conquerors-commissioners-project/<p>I am very pleased to announce a <em>second</em> AHRC-funded project which will also build on the DigiPal framework. In addition to the 'Models of Authority' announced in <a href="http://localhost:8080/blog/new-digipal-project-models-of-authority/">an earlier post</a>, the '<a href="http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk">Exon Domesday, Conqueror's Commisioners</a>' will begin on 1 October 2014, immediately after DigiPal itself finishes, and will continue until 30 September 2017. It constitutes a detailed study of the Exon Domesday Book, including its palaeography and codicology, and will result in extensions to the DigiPal framework which include more detailed modelling and visualisation particularly for codicology, distributions of palaeographical features throughout a single manuscript, and geographical content in the book. Quoting from the <a href="http://www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk/visiting/cathedrallibrary/exon-domesday-book-unlocked-for-future-generations-.ashx">project press release</a>,</p>
<blockquote>One of the most precious treasures of Exeter Cathedral Library is at last to receive the attention it deserves thanks to a major research project hosted by King’s College London and the Friends of Exeter Cathedral and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Few local residents know that Exeter houses the earliest manuscript of William the Conqueror’s Domesday survey. Exon Domesday, written in the South West nearly 1000 years ago, and housed at Exeter for most or all of its lifetime, is the most complete and extensive record of the data collected by commissioners working across England at the end of the Conqueror’s reign. It records data for Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire before the process of editing and simplification which produced Great Domesday Book, the version of Domesday Book known to all and preserved at the National Archives at Kew. Exon Domesday provides unique information about the landscape and population of these counties in the generation before and after the Norman conquest of 1066. Researchers also hope that Exon Domesday will contain the key to understanding the Domesday survey itself, one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the effectiveness of royal government in the Middle Ages.</blockquote>
<p>The project will be lead by Prof. Julia Crick in the Department of History at King's College London; Co-Investigators are Dr Stephen Baxter (St Peter's College Oxford) and me (Peter Stokes, Dept. of Digital Humanities at King's). Researchers include Geoffroy Noël (from the DigiPal project) and Chris Lewis, both also from King's. There will be two PhD studentships and one Research Associate position as part of this project, so look out for further announcements about these shortly.</p>DigiPal at DH20142014-07-03T08:56:31+00:002014-07-03T18:18:05+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-at-dh2014/<p>The DigiPal project will be represented at <a href="http://dh2014.org/">DH2014</a> in <a href="https://dh2014.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/digital-humanities-2014-posters-june-17.pdf">Poster Session 1</a> at 14:00-15:30 in the Amphipôle Building, UNIL, on July 10th. I will be there to demonstrate not only the latest version of DigiPal, but also to provide an exclusive view of ScandiPal and SephardiPal, two projects by PhD students, Matilda Watson and Debora Matos, who are extending and applying the framework to eleventh-century Scandinavian fragments and fifteenth-century Hebrew manuscripts from the Iberian Peninsula. You will also get to see the back end and new API, and to discuss the finer details of the framework and how you could use and extend it yourself. The published abstract for the poster is freely available online at <a href="http://dharchive.org/paper/DH2014/Poster-193.xml">http://dharchive.org/paper/DH2014/Poster-193.xml</a>, and a copy of the poster is below (3.9MB); if you look closely at the poster then you'll find some other interesting details buried in there which will be announced publicly before long.</p>
<p>I hope to see you there!</p>
<p><a href="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/DH2014%20Poster.pdf" title="Download full resolution poster (3.9MB)"><img alt="Poster" height="493" src="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/.thumbnails/DH2014%20Poster.jpg/DH2014%20Poster-697x493.jpg" title="Click to download full resolution version (3.9 MB)" width="697"/></a></p>A New Phase for DigiPal: The Models of Authority Project2014-03-28T11:42:05+00:002015-07-15T12:30:43+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/new-digipal-project-models-of-authority/<h4>UPDATE (15th July 2015): We are delighted to announce that the <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk">Models of Authority</a> site is now up and running. </h4>
<p>I am very pleased to announce a new AHRC-funded project which (among other things) will result in some important extensions to the DigiPal framework. 'Models of Authority' is a study of Scottish charters and the emergence of government for the period 1100–1250, to run from 1 April 2014 to 31 July 2017. Quoting from the proposal summary:</p>
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<p>This project is about government and the way it emerged and developed in the middle ages. Government as we would think of it today can first be recognised in western Europe during the twelfth century. But was it the natural result of increasing royal power and authority; or was it a response of kings to disorder? Understanding the emergence of medieval government has to be based on understanding the main source of evidence - charters - and it is in the twelfth century that charters begin to survive in large numbers. This project's new approach is to focus on understanding and interpreting the most distinctive features of charters - the appearance of their handwriting and the formulaic aspects of their prose. </p>
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<p>The Principal Investigator is <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/dauvitbroun/">Prof. Dauvit Broun</a> from the University of Glasgow; Co-Investigators are Drs <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/people/staff/academic/taylor/index.aspx">Alice Taylor</a> and DigiPal's <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/people/academic/stokes/">Peter Stokes</a>, both from King's College London, and <a href="http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/mtjw2@cam.ac.uk">Dr Tessa Webber</a> from the University of Cambridge; researchers are <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/johndavies/">Dr John Davies</a> from Glasgow, and Dr <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/people/research/brookes/">Stewart Brookes</a> and <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/people/academic/noel/">Geoffroy Noël</a> from the DigiPal project at King's College London; the research student is Joanna Tucker from Glasgow. </p>
<div>The DigiPal part of the project will not start until the existing grant ends on 30 September 2014, but we will be implementing two significant new developments in the framework, both of which people have been requesting for a long time. The first is the incorporation of full transcripts, meaning that we will be able to link images and annotations to TEI-encoded texts. The second is a formal model for the representation of cursive script, removing the restriction to set script that DigiPal currently supports.</div>
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<div>I’m very happy to be working with this group, and particularly for the chance to add significantly to DigiPal, extending its development for a few more years yet. The cursive script will be a particularly interesting challenge, and I very much look forward to seeing where it all goes.</div>