2d Scanning and photography
project: Grammatical change in recent English (1961-1991) : a corpus-based investigation
Grant Holder: Professor Geoffrey Leech
The project's main goal was to investigate recent changes in English grammar during the period 1961-1991. Its secondary goal was to develop a new methodology for tracking changes in the language, using comparable or 'matching' corpora of text samples, and employing tagging software and grammar-sensitive search tools. A third goal was the provision of the part-of-speech tagged matching corpora for general distribution to the research community. [read more]
project: Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project
Grant Holder: Dr Michael Given
The Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project is investigating human activity across the landscape during all time periods, using intensive archaeological and geomorphological survey. TAESP is working in a broad area of the north-central Troodos mountains that includes fertile valleys and plains, copper-bearing foothills, and the northern part of the Troodos Range itself. Other than some rescue excavation of tombs, no systematic archaeological work had been done in this area, and none at all in the mountains. [read more]
project: Merv, Central Asian city: a programme of ceramic analyses
Grant Holder: Tim Williams
The project explored the changing types and styles of pottery found at the ancient cities of Merv (now in Turkmenistan, Central Asia), one of the great urban centres of the Silk Roads. [read more]
project: A database for provenance research of Chinese works of art, piloting the Burrell Collection
Grant Holder: Professor Nicholas Pearce
The outcome of the project is a compilation of sources for provenance research of Chinese works of art, for use by institutions and researchers. Using The Burrell Collection in Glasgow as a pilot, the project documents records relating to dealers and collectors who specialised in Chinese art during the first half of the twentieth century.
The Burrell Collection can be seen as a paradigm for the collecting of Chinese art during the early twentieth century. [read more]
project: A web-mounted database of mid-Victorian wood engraved illustration
Grant Holder: Dr Julia Thomas
This is a digital database of at least nearly 900 wood engravings from periodicals and books published in the 'golden age' of illustration: the mid-nineteenth century. Taking 1862 as a sample year, the database draws on two major collections: the periodical illustrations of the 1860s and 70s in the School of Art Museum and Gallery, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and the Forrest Reid collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. These important collections are currently under-exploited and accessible only to scholars in Britain. [read more]
project: Designing Shakespeare: an audio-visual archive 1960-2000
Grant Holder: Dr Christie Carson
Research Questions and Problems
Can a comprehensive audio-visual archive of performance information encourage further research into performance in English Departments and support teaching in Drama and Theatre Studies Departments?
Can oral history interviews with designers add significantly to the study of performance?
Can access to a large database of digital images based around a design theme encourage greater emphasis on the visual elements of performance for scholars and students of Shakespeare?
What can we conclude about the development of theatre design, theatre spaces and thea [read more]
project: Chopin's First Editions Online
Grant Holder: Professor John Rink
The project has four key aims:
1. To create an online resource uniting the original impressions of Chopin's first editions in an unprecedented virtual collection
2. To develop complex textual interlinking of this virtual collection and relevant excerpts of the Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions (co-authored by Christophe Grabowski and John Rink, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2005)
3. To provide comparative text-analytical commentary on the multiple first editions in this archive
4. [read more]
project: The Old Bailey Online, 1674-1834
Grant Holder: Professor Tim Hitchcock
The Old Bailey Proceedings form one of the largest bodies of published text ever created, detailing the lives and experiences of non-elite people. Containing 25 million words of text, they record the evidence given at and outcome of 100,000 trials held at the Old Bailey. This project has created a searchable text-base, that can be used for free text searching, structured searching of marked-up text, and statistical analysis. [read more]
project: Papers of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806 - 1859)
Grant Holder: Dr Mark Horton
The University of Bristol, UK, holds over 33,000 pages in the Brunel Collection. This collection contains the personal papers of the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a key figure in the Industrial Revolution. However, despite its importance as a scholarly resource, no electronic catalogue of the collection exists and physical access is limited. In 2003 the University was awarded an AHRB resource enhancement grant to carry out a pilot digitization project to bring this resource to a wider audience via the Internet. [read more]
project: The St Alban's Psalter: on the Web
Grant Holder: Dr Jane Geddes
To digitise the St Albans Psalter and place it on the web. The images are accompanied by complete transcription, translation (Latin into both English and German). Each image has a page-by-page commentary, and the manuscript is amplified by about 40,000 words of accompanying essays.
Aims: to make the psalter available in colour.
Research questions: to understand how the manuscript was made, when, for whom, and why the range of images were chosen.
Wider research context: this manuscript is the finest example of English Romanesque painting, kept outside Britain (in Germany). [read more]