Our 
Community

I am a Research Associate (Health Services Research) at the University of Liverpool. I am a social and cultural historian with an interest in numerical techniques. I was employed on the ERC-funded Spatial Humanities project from 2014 to 2016. I study influences on infant mortality in nineteenth-century England and Wales. My work uses geographical information systems (GIS) to examine patterns in Victorian statistics. I also use corpus linguistics to explore large corpora of digitised Victorian documents such as the British Library Nineteenth Century Newspapers collection.

Katherine's PhD researched the altepetl, an indigenous geopolitical unit, in Central Mexico between the Late Postclassic (1325-1521) and the Early Colonial periods (1521-1585). This research focused on representations of space, place and landscape, drawing on a variety of archaeological and historical information, including work produced as part of the Digging into Early Colonial Mexico project. More broadly, her research interests lie in the application of Digital Humanities methods for historical study, with a particular focus on Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

James was a Research Associate on the Chronotopic Cartographies  project, with a background in psycholinguistics – especially concerning name formation, development, and cognition. His previous work on the Geospatial Innovations project involved the design of a custom gazetteer, in order to track spatial reference and relationships in greater detail. Other prior work at Lancaster University has included the Lakescraft Project, which formed part of a wider research investigation into adapting literary material into educational-led gaming formats.

Ruth's research explored the use of corpus linguistics (the machine-assisted analysis of language in very large bodies of text) as a means of approaching historical ‘Big Data’. A historian by training, she was interested in how corpus linguistics helps us to digest the ever-growing digital archive.  More specifically, she explored  attitudes towards immigrants and refugees in nineteenth century newspapers. Her PhD was ESRC-funded and conducted in collaboration with the British Library, London. Her research won was awarded the 2018 The Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship in Nineteenth-Century Media.

​Chris was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural History at Lancaster. His research was primarily concerned with 18th- and 19th-century cultural and environmental history, with a specific emphasis on the history of the English Lake District. He was  especially interested in travel writing and topographical literature. His research projects include Geospatial Innovation in the Digital Humanities: A Deep Map of the English Lake District (2015-2018), which was funded by the Leverhulme Trust. He co-edited the Digital Forum for the Journal of Victorian Culture.

Fiona is now a Professor in the Department of History at Durham. Before that she was Professor of Regional History at Lancaster. She is a historian of medieval Britain and Ireland, with research interests ranging from the sixth century to the twelfth. Her work knows no borders, focusing on maritime connections and now-lost kingdoms. Particular areas of interest are the Irish Sea region in the Viking Age, and ‘Middle Britain’ (northern England and southern Scotland) prior to the Anglo-Scottish border. Her monograph investigates links between the kingdom of Northumbria and the Gaelic-speaking world, and she has also worked on connections between Northumbria, Strathclyde and Wales. She is interested in interdisciplinary work, for example combining historical and linguistic evidence through the study of names, and deploying GIS to investigate past landscapes. For many years she was the Director of Lancaster's Regional Heritage Centre.

I am Professor in Digital Humanities at the University of Exeter. My research interests lie in two distant but related fields: the development of geographic thought and representation in Antiquity, and the emerging role of the Web as a transformational medium for communicating and connecting complex information. For the former I have undertaken theoretical and digital analyses of specific documents from Antiquity, including the Geographike Hyphegesis of Claudius Ptolemy and the Roman Itineraries. In the latter I apply Web-based (and Linked Open Data) technologies to annotate, connect and revisualize geographic aspects of the past through its textual and material culture, most notably as Director of the Pelagios  Project. I am heavily engaged with the Digital Humanities community worldwide as a member of the Executive Committee of the European Association for the Digital Humanities (EADH) and as Treasurer of the International Society for the History of the Map. I am also investigating a hilltop enclosure in Forres, Scotland.

Amelia's research project was part of the ERC-funded Spatial Humanities project which explored how Geographical Information Systems (GIS) could be used to the analysis of qualitative data, for the benefit of disciplines in the Humanities. She investigated nineteenth-century newspapers using corpus linguistics methods and GIS with a goal to making a contribution to the field of History. The main research question was: ‘how are places represented in British public discourse and how has this changed over time?’ Her research won was awarded the 2016 The Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship in Nineteenth-Century Media.

Jonathan's research examined the social and economic development of medieval Lancashire from the evidence of increasing agroeconomic activity and its impact on the coastal and lowland landscape of south west Lancashire during the period 1150 to 1550. This study drew on the interpretation of minor place-names recorded in title deeds as evidence of significant change in landscape through socio-economic practice. He used GIS to map the locations of minor place-names and features of the historic landscape to reveal this development. His research was funded by the ESRC on a CASE studentship in collaboration with Lancashire County Archives.

James's research interests were in the use of digital research methods to explore big data, with a particular focus upon Full Count Datasets. Primarily his research interests concern edthe utilisation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Corpus Linguistic software to explore historical events, issues, and topics with new data. A wider research interest was in the construction, maintenance, and dissemination of ‘Big Data’ within the discipline of history, including the development of Linked Micro Census Data with Vital Records. A major theme within his research concerned the composition and behaviour of foreign-born migrants in England and Wales during the period 1851-1911.

I am an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Limerick. I was a researcher on the EPSRC funded SHARC project based in Computing and Communications at Lancaster University and a Research Associate on the European Research Council (ERC) project ‘Spatial Humanities: Texts, GIS & Places’. My research interests involve the application of geospatial and corpus linguistic techniques in human geography and the digital humanities.  This includes the temporal and spatial investigation of nineteenth and early twentieth century corpora such as official medical reports, newspapers, and related datasets.

​

I also have a particular interest in historical geography, the history of cartography, ‘place’, and how early maps can be interrogated using quantitative techniques.

Alex was a PhD student on the ‘Geospatial Innovations’ project where he developed a prototype deep map that allows a range of user-groups to gain new understandings of the importance of space and place to Lake District heritage. His primary interests were in the use of computer applications in archaeology for the purpose of digital documentation of heritage sites and the dissemination of data to the public. His background was in the documentation of heritage sites with 3D laser scanning and photogrammetry, and the development of apps for museum exhibits and GIS applications for large datasets.

Murray's PhD researched early modern road administration (c. 1550-1800) in terms of spatial awareness, connectivity, and the politics of local governance. His case study area was the South Pennines, centred on the parish of Halifax, a centre of the woollen cloth industry. He used GIS techniques to map different types of activity and tease out the strategies involved. The source data include the exceptional series of 6,000 highway presentments to the Wakefield manor court (17th century), taxation records, and highway surveyor and turnpike trust records (18th century) from 40 townships across the West Riding and East Lancashire.

I am now a Senior Lecturer in 19th Century Literature and Digital Humanities at the University of Manchester. From 2015-18 I was the Senior Research Associate on the Leverhulme-funded project Geospatial Innovation in the Digital Humanities in the DH Hub at Lancaster. My research specialism is nineteenth-century literature and culture, particularly Romantic poetry. I am especially interested in how texts from this era engage with issues around space and place, including imaginary space, cartography and walking, and the ways in which digital techniques can facilitate the discussion, presentation and complication of humanities study. 

Ben was a History PhD student at Lancaster University investigating both the history of automation online (i.e. the rise of algorithms and bots and its societal implications), and the ways in which such automation is affecting the collection, curation and dissemination of history, archaeology and cultural heritage. This involved everything from examining the roles of robots in conserving knowledge on Wikipedia to the algorithmic creation of fake cultural artefacts for sale online. He completed his MA in the Archaeology of Death and Memory at the University of Chester and was particularly interested in how the public perceives and consumes historical and archaeological information. He also worked with the NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) as a public member, helping to train health researchers in how best to involve the public in their work.