VOICES Workshop
Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, PI of the VOICES ERC project, together with Professor Declan O’Sullivan Computer Science lead, and Research Fellows Dr Bronagh McShane, Dr Daniel Patterson and Dr Lucy Mckenna held a workshop on the sources and enabling technologies in the VOICES project in the Long Room Hub in Trinity College, Dublin on April the 11th.
Professor Ohlmeyer said, “Our team of historians and computer scientists is progressing at pace to analyse the tremendous windfall of data ranging from the 1641 Depositions, to records of debt and credit and Chancery records, and curate them in such a way as they can be presented in a Knowledge Graph. This will transform how we can access and interrogate previously inaccessible information on these women and recover their voices and experiences during this transformative period.”
Professor Declan O’Sullivan, School of Computer Science and Statistics, TCD led a panel discussion on the Knowledge Graph technology that is so pivotal to the impact the VOICES will deliver. He said, “In VOICES, we are using a range of innovative AI technologies, including a Knowledge Graph to integrate the unstructured data in these diverse historical sources into knowledge that can be interrogated and visualised.”
Professor Ohlmeyer and Professor O’Sullivan were joined by a number of leading historians including Professor Mary O’Dowd, Queens University Belfast; Dr Amanda Capern, University of Hull; Dr Clodagh Tait, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, who led discussions around core sources for the VOICES project including the 1641 Depositions, Chancery Materials, Wills and Testaments and Parliamentary records. An audience of experts – historical, literary and technical – from universities across Ireland greatly enriched the discussion.
Zoe Reid, Keeper of Public Services and Records at The National Archives (NAI), spoke about the close collaboration between the NAI and TCD on the VOICES project. The VOICES team is drawing on the vast archives of Chancery records held by the NAI and digitising many of the original documents to include them in the VOICES Knowledge Graph.
Dr. Peter Crookes, Academic Director of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) also spoke about the between the VRTI and the VOICES team. He said, “VOICES is addressing the big digital change of our time, which is that we have more digital content available than ever before. Much of that has come through the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland. VOICES will give us tools to explore segments of society, non-elite women, that we’ve never had before.”
The workshop closed with Artist Rita Duffy, highlighting the very graphic the graphic nature of the violence experienced by women of the time sharing some of her, she noted, “In the 1641 Depositions for example, there was an articulation of something that is being repeated now… its a combustion of the contemporary and historical. Therein lies the learning.”
