Tag Archives: AHRC

Three New Collaborative Doctoral Awards supervised by Chatsworth House and the University of Sheffield

From Servants to Staff: the Whole Community in the Chatsworth Household 1700-2000

We are delighted to announce three AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Awards co-supervised by Chatsworth House and the University of Sheffield

Application deadline: 12pm, Thursday 23 April 2015
Interviews: interviews will take place on 11 May 2015

Project Description

The aim of this project is to use the extensive archival materials in the Devonshire Collection in order to gain an understanding of the wider community who have lived and worked at Chatsworth over the past three centuries, brought together by relationships of work and service. It will employ an interdisciplinary linguistic-historical approach to explore the changing relationship between masters and servants between 1700 and 2000.

Key research questions to be addressed include:

  • how has the language used about servants and estate workers in these archives changed across this time?
  • how have the working conditions of those employed in and around the house changed?
  • how has Chatsworth functioned as a community at different times?
  • how can Chatsworth represent the stories of the people who have worked for the Cavendish family in an ethical and engaging manner?

The project comprises three interconnected PhD projects, each focusing on a different century. Each will be a coherent project in its own right, but taken together the three projects will chart a compelling narrative across three centuries of social and economic change.

 Studentship Descriptions

  • Community, Conflict and Change at Chatsworth, 1700-1820
  • A Community of Masters and Servants? Chatsworth, 1811-1914
  • The Making of a Modern Estate: Employment & Service at Chatsworth in the 20th Century

For more information on the studentships available, award details and eligibility please visit: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/history/phd/chatsworth

PhD Studentship Available – ‘Crime and Policing in 18th and 19th-Century London’

This studentship is attached to the AHRC funded Digital Transformations project, ‘The Digital Panopticon: The Global Impact of London Punishments, 1780-1925’, a collaborative project between the Universities of Liverpool, Sheffield, Oxford, Sussex, and Tasmania.

The project seeks to use innovative digital methodologies to investigate the penal outcomes of those convicted at the Old Bailey, by comparing imprisonment in Britain with transportation from Britain to Australia. The project will assemble large and complex bodies of criminal justice, genealogical and biometric data and use sophisticated visualisation and data-linking methodologies to map and analyse convict lives at both the collective and individual level.

The award will cover the cost of UK/EU tuition fees and provides an annual maintenance grant at the standard RCUK rate (full-time rate £13,863 for 2014-15) for three years. The studentship will commence on 1 October 2015.

To apply for the studentship, applicants need to apply directly to the University of Sheffield for entrance into the doctoral programme in History.

The general eligibility requirements are:

• Students applying for a doctoral studentship should normally have, or be studying for, a Master’s degree, or equivalent qualification, in History or a related discipline.
• Applicants should also have a 2.1 in a BA degree, or equivalent qualification, in history or a related discipline.
• Awards are open to UK, EU and international applicants who are applying to study either full or part-time.

For more information please see:
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/history/phd/crime-and-policing

Any academic enquiries should be directed to Professor Robert Shoemaker (r.shoemaker@sheffield.ac.uk).

Any questions about the application process should be directed to Beky Hasnip (r.hasnip@sheffield.ac.uk).

Extended deadline for our Digital Transformations PhD Project Studentships!

We are pleased to announce three new PhD studentships for 2014 entry attached to the AHRC funded Digital Transformations project, ‘The Digital Panopticon: The Global Impact of London Punishments, 1780-1925’ a collaborative project between the Universities of Liverpool, Sheffield, Oxford, Sussex, and Tasmania.

The project seeks to use innovative digital methodologies to investigate the penal outcomes of those convicted at the Old Bailey, by comparing imprisonment in Britain with transportation from Britain to Australia.

Deadline for applications: Monday 28 July 2014

Supervisor: Professor Bob Shoemaker

Find out more and apply here.

Studentship one: ‘The Social and Spatial Worlds of Old Bailey Convicts, 1785-1875’

This studentship will investigate the social and geographical origins and destinations of men and women convicted at the Old Bailey between 1785 and 1875, in order to shed light on patterns of mobility, the causes of crime, and understandings of identity in early industrial Britain.

Studentship two: ‘Criminal Recidivism in 18th and 19th-Century London’

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the development of the concepts of habitual offending and the criminal class. Taking advantage of the extensive records of both petty and serious crime digitised and linked together by the Digital Panopticon project, this studentship will investigate these phenomena from the perspective of the judicial records, by tracing the incidence and character of repeat offending.

Studentship three: ‘The Impact of Digital Resources in the History of Crime’

This project will examine the impact of the widespread availability of digital resources on attitudes towards crime and its history. Core case studies will include the Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Founders and Survivors (records of the 73,000 men women and children who were transported to Tasmania), and the Digital Panopticon website.

Old Bailey Proceedings Online celebrates tenth anniversary with audience of millions

The Old Bailey Online celebrated its tenth birthday this month (15 April 2013) after attracting over 34 million page views since it went live in 2003.

The searchable archive of proceedings from the Old Bailey trials from 1674 to 1913 has been used by scholars, students and the general public over the past decade to uncover multiple hidden histories.

Old Bailey Online has so far had over 34 million page views, more than 5 million visits and 3.5 million unique users from all over the world.

The website also provided the inspiration for the three series of the BBC One award-winning drama Garrow’s Law and the Radio 4 series ‘Voices from the Old Bailey’.

The founders of the Old Bailey Online, Professor Robert Shoemaker (University of Sheffield) and Professor Tim Hitchcock (Hertfordshire University) were awarded the Longman-History Today Trustees Award for their major contribution to history. The award was given for the ground-breaking Old Bailey and follow-up London Lives projects that point the way to the future of the discipline.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the National Lottery, the Old Bailey Online was developed at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield.  Since its completion the same project team have added two new resources to widen its reach. London Lives, released in 2010, contains records relating to crime, poverty and social policy in eighteenth-century London. This fully searchable resource provides access to over 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to the names of 3.4 million Londoners.  Locating London’s Past, launched in December 2011, allows place names from the Old Bailey Proceedings to be mapped onto John Rocque’s 1746 map of London and the first accurate modern Ordinance Survey Map (1869-80).

A pioneering online historical resource, the Old Bailey Online has inspired countless other online projects.  It is also included in several larger web resources, including Connected Histories, a search interface for twenty-two online historical databases.

Professor Shoemaker said:

“The Old Bailey Online has been used in many, many ways we never anticipated.   We are particularly proud of the fact it is a free resource, open to all, and we continue to be amazed at the creative work it facilitates.”

Additional information

Professor Robert Shoemaker:

r.shoemaker@sheffield.ac.uk

www.sheffield.ac.uk/history/staff/robert-shoemaker

www.oldbaileyonline.org/

www.londonlives.org/

www.locatinglondon.org/

www.connectedhistories.org/