The research team behind the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded Old Bailey Online project has been awarded nearly £200,000 by an international grant competition to undertake pioneering new research, based on the original digital archive.
The team, as part of a group of academics from the United States, Canada and Britain, took part in the `Digging into Data Challenge´ and was awarded £177,595 for their project, entitled `Data Mining with Criminal Intent.´
Only eight of 150 submitted projects received funding from the competition, which is sponsored by four leading research agencies from the USA, Canada and Britain and aims to promote innovative new methods of large-scale data analysis.
The Old Bailey Online project is an online, searchable database of the proceedings of the Old Bailey between 1674 and 1913, and offers a fascinating insight into the history of criminality, law and society in London. The digitising of the archive was completed in 2008 by academics from the Universities of Hertfordshire and Sheffield and the Open University and was funded in part by a £300,000 research grant from the AHRC, which allowed the team to double the amount of material available on the website.
The database now contains the proceedings of 197,745 trials held at the Old Bailey. It includes the trials of such famous – or infamous – figures as Oscar Wilde and Dr Hawley Crippen, but it also provides a glimpse into the lives of many people who might otherwise have been forgotten by history, making it an invaluable resource for the study of social history.
Leading the British arm of the new project are Professors Tim Hitchcock and Bob Shoemaker, from the Universities of Hertfordshire and Sheffield respectively, who also directed the Old Bailey Online project. Building on their earlier work, the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield will create an Application Programming Interface (API) based on the Old Bailey Online, which will be used by research groups in Canada and the United States to test new, more efficient and consistent methods of searching large volumes of data for specific language.
Further to this, one of the other eight winners of the Digging into Data challenge was an AHRC-funded group of researchers from the University of Sheffield, along with academics from the Universities of Michigan and Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The team has been awarded £183,233 for research into the study of historical manuscripts using modern data mining and pattern recognition tools.
The Old Bailey Online digital archive can be found at www.oldbaileyonline.org/
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AHRC Media Contact: Tom Chlebik, Communications Team. Tel: 0117 9876 780
Notes to editors
Announced in January 2009, the Digging into Data challenge is an international grant competition designed to encourage research in social science and the humanities using large-scale data analysis. It is sponsored by four leading research agencies; the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) from the United Kingdom, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), from the United States, the National Science Foundation (NSF) from the United States and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) from Canada, and is being administered by the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
JISC is a joint committee of the U.K. further and higher education funding bodies and is responsible for supporting the innovative use of information and communication technology to support learning, teaching, and research. It is best known for providing a U.K. national infrastructure network, a range of support, content and advisory services, and a portfolio of high-quality resources.
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the NEH supports learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities. NEH grants enrich classroom learning, create and preserve knowledge, and bring ideas to life through public television, radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions, and programs in libraries and other community places.
NSF is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering, with an annual budget of $6.06 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to over 1,900 universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 45,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes over 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards more than $400 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
SSHRC is the federal agency that promotes and supports university-based research and training in the humanities and social sciences. Through its programs and policies, the Council enables the highest levels of research excellence in Canada and facilitates knowledge-sharing and collaboration across research disciplines, universities and all sectors of society.
Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £102 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,350 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.